The Creative Investor - Announcing the DEALS IN PROGRESS Forum!

(This article submitted by Nancy Chadwick and Mark Reynolds (commercialking))

To advertise or not to advertise in the Forums on TCI – this has been an issue of interest and concern to both TCI posters and Moderators. If you have a property to sell the “Properties” section works very well. But what if you want a local partner to help with property management on a property far from your home? The “Properties” section is not very flexible. Although the Forums allow you to describe what you’re looking for in great detail, they don’t allow advertising.

Advertising in the Forums has been prohibited on TCI for a long time because 1.) It’s easy for a site to become overrun with junk (including ads), and 2.) The moderators have no way to sort out ads that are legitimate from those that are not. Members may think that TCI has investigated and approved of opportunities advertised on TCI. THAT’S NOT CORRECT! TCI and its

Moderators do NOT verify that potential deals or the members advertising them are legitimate.

TCI is on the “cutting edge” of real estate investor sites. With the roll-out of the TCI Commercial site Joel became willing to try an experiment—a forum in which you can advertise.

We have constructed “Special Rules” for this Forum, but all other TCI Rules remain in effect: no fishing, no spamming, no hustling or playing guru, no group events, no YELLING, no bashing or personal attacks, no flaming, no personal contact information. When you go to the Forums section of the Commercial site, under “Deals in Progress” you will see a link to these rules:

1. THE ADVERTISED TRANSACTION MUST BE REAL AND SPECIFIC.
In other words, there must be enough information in the post for a prospective investor to begin to judge the nature of the transaction and its viability. The portion of the deal which you are advertising for must be clearly laid out. You can't solicit members through Forum posts, Private Messages or Email for deals that are hypothetical, imaginary or a fantasy or where you don't provide essential details (area location, property type, investment criteria, etc). This includes material in your "signature."

2. THE ADVERTISED TRANSACTION MUST INVOLVE A CERTAIN TYPE OF PROPERTY.
That is, it may not be a residential transaction of less than 5 dwelling units. It may be retail, industrial, office or other types of commercial real estate or it may be raw land.

3. YOU CANNOT ADVERTISE YOUR SERVICES.
In other words, no ads looking for mentors, mentees, clients or customers.

4. YOU MUST BE A PRINCIPAL IN THE ADVERTISED TRANSACTION.
You must have an ownership interest in the property - i.e., you cannot be a bird dog, RE broker/agent, attorney, accountant, lender or other consultant.

Protecting yourself from phony deals and people is still your responsibility, but the hope is that this Forum may help people hone their due diligence skills and also avoid scams. This Forum is very much an experiment. If it gets swamped with junk, it will be discontinued. The goal here is to make the Deals in Progress Forum a positive, useful and effective tool for you that will further enhance your real estate investing experience.

If you have questions about the Deals in Progress Forum and what can or cannot be posted there, please post them as comments to this Article, and we’ll attempt to answer them for you. In this way we hope that this Article can become a sort of “user’s manual” for the Deals in Progress Forum.