Overview
Background: BiggerPockets is the leading online community for real estate investors, with 3M+ members using the platform to learn, connect, and grow their portfolios. Pro members get access to premium tools — including Market Finder, designed to help investors evaluate markets for investment potential. After years of stagnation (the data hadn’t been refreshed since 2024), the team decided to rebuild Market Finder from scratch.
Problem: Market Finder lacked the depth and credibility that serious investors needed to act. It was also narrowly scoped to the acquisition phase of real estate investing — useful mainly if you were actively searching for a new market to buy in.
Solution: Launch Market Insights, a rebuilt and expanded version of the feature that lets Pro members search, browse, and filter 350+ U.S. markets — then dive into in-depth market reports powered by fresh data and LLM-generated insights.
Scope
Goals: Replace an aging feature with a more useful, credible one. Serve investors at every stage (not just acquisition), and give Pro membership a compelling flagship feature.
Team: I worked closely with our senior product designer and product director, drew on findings from user interviews I conducted, and collaborated with our engineering and investing teams on the report architecture.
Timeline: March - May 2026
Process
Feature name: The team had been calling this "Market Finder 2.0" internally. I advocated for renaming it “Market Insights” — not just to signal an update, but also to reframe the purpose of the tool. "Insights" works whether you're in the research phase or already invested in a market and tracking it over time. The name change was approved and became the foundation for all subsequent messaging.
Research to content: I conducted five user interviews with existing Market Finder users to understand how they actually search for and evaluate markets — their process, mental models, and frustrations. Two things came directly out of that research into the content: (1) I prioritized market discovery over search in the UI hierarchy, because most users didn't arrive with a specific market in mind; (2) I reframed the product messaging from "choose a market" to "build your shortlist," which better matched how investors actually think about this phase of their process.
Report architecture: I audited 200+ available data points from various providers to determine what should be included in the MVP report and how it should be organized. I landed on 50+ key points, grouped into logical sections with clear headers, labels, and tooltips and written to be scannable and jargon-aware.
Gating strategy & copy: Since Market Insights is a Pro-only feature, I helped determine how much and what content free members could preview, and wrote the dashboard state for free members — a high-stakes conversion moment where the copy needed to convey the value of Pro without feeling like a hard sell.'
GTM messaging guide: After developing the content strategy and product copy for Market Insights, I developed go-to-market messaging guidelines to ensure a cohesive, compelling narrative across the funnel, from our podcast reads to our paid ad placements.
Deliverables: Dashboard states
Deliverables: Market report
Deliverables: GTM messaging guide
Results
Market Insights launched in May 2026. Early reads showed:
48% adoption rate among Pro members within the first 60 days (well above the 20-30% typically considered good for a new feature)
12% increase in Pro membership conversion among free members who encountered the gated dashboard state