Advice to borrowers who are writing loan listings, updated
0.Spellcheck and good grammar are important – this can seem silly, but people are put off by shoddy-looking borrower statements – ask your group leader for help if necessary.
1.Clear, detailed descriptions of what you need the money for, what kind of significant debt you already have – and, this is important, an explanation of how you’ll be able to pay it back:
An example of an acceptable, though certainly imperfect, listing:
I am a 30 year old mother of 2. I lost my job of 6 years at Bellsouth in May of 2005. I have currently been at my present job since August of 2005. This job does not pay as much as Bellsouth. In the process of me losing my job, I got involved in some payday loans. I have been only able to pay the finance charges on these loans as I have so many of them. This situation has caused me to fall behind on some more important bills as these payday loans hit my bank account directly. I am issuing out about 800 dollars a month for these payday loans. If I could pay off these loans, I could save an extra 600 dollars a month to catch up on other important bills. I am not a bad person. I only made some desperate decisions at a desperate time. I need to pay off the following: Sonic Cash (600.00), Ezpaydaycash (375.00), Cash Now Newengland (750.00), Cash Today (289.00), Cash In A Wink (675.00), Nationwide Cash Advance (375.00), Fast Cash (325.00), AIP (279.00), Cash Zip (288.00) and 1 overdue mortgage payment of 1100.00. I make 30160.00 yearly plus an extra 500.00 a month in child support. All of these payday loans come due every 2 weeks and the finance charges range between 25.00 - 175.00. Please help.
Some excellent advice from GogMagog:
In your loan, don’t dwell on your problems, talk about your solutions. Briefly mention your credit problems, but tell them to look at your profile for more information. Lenders look at loans in a list of dozens. Place something like this near the beginning of your loan… “I have had problems with debt in the past (see my profile), but this is how I plan to make it right.” You are taking a lender’s money, they want to know it is in good hands. You need to SHOW them you have a plan.
- “I have 2 credit cards that are at 24% and 30% interest. This 18% loan will help me reduce that rate.”
- “I have a car loan that has a $200 payment, by refinancing with Prosper, my monthly payment will drop to $150 a month.”
- My car broke down and I need a new one. My bank won’t lend me $3,000 for a used car. They only loan $5,000 and above, and the dealer financing is at %25!
- I have a payday loan for $500 that I just can’t afford to get rid of. It costs me $30 every two weeks to prevent default. I need $1,000 to pay off the loan, and give me a cushion so that I don’t have to live from paycheck to paycheck.
2.Details on your employment:
If you have an ebay userID w/lots of sales, post a link inviting lenders to contact you through your ebay store/ID.
Your place of employment doesn’t have to be flashy or impressive – just honest and full of confirmable detail. For example, saying that “I work at a big firm in
-that you work as a secretary at Ling Architecture, LLC
-that your firm’s web page can be found at www.lingarc.com
-that your company email address is hazred@lingarc.com
-that your extension at the company is x8765
-that someone can call you at the main number listed on www.lingarc.com, and ask to be transferred to you by name
-that your salary is $28,000
-that your paystubs (w/social security number crossed out) are either available upon request, or already posted on a web page reachable here
-that someone in Human Resources at Ling Architecture (or failing that, your boss) will let your group leader to call him/her (again, through the main number listed on the website) to confirm your employment and salary.
-Perhaps you can post the negatives and derogatories summary portion of your credit report, anonymized, of course. (See this post for more detail.)
One, to give enough information to make people comfortable w/you as a borrower, and to put a human face on what can otherwise be a very asocial process.
Two, because you can change your profile at any time, but you can’t alter your loan once posted, you should make your profile a question and answer page for lenders. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT – within your loan listing, say something at the end like: Please go look at my profile here (include a link to your profile) to see questions and answers from other lenders. Do so – if a lender asks you a reasonable question, answer it and post the Q&A in your profile.
6.Overall, do as much of the lenders’ due diligence for them as possible:
-if you’re a college graduate, provide an alumni association phone number where they can confirm that you graduated from that college.
-if you want a loan to fund your education, include a transcript (again, w/ your account number and social security number crossed out).
-if you want to post hospital bills or payday loans (again, w/sensitive information crossed out) that express your need, do that.
-if you claim that you have plenty of money, but want to take out another cheap prosper loan to fund a real estate project, include a picture of a bank statement after removing account info, home address, etc.
-or, maybe include the address that you’re working on fixing up.
Prosper loan listings and profiles limit the number of images you can attach. Say you need more, but don't have a web site to put them on. One free way to post images (that I've never used, and have no affiliation with, other than googling it up first)
8.Special considerations for E/HR/NC folk, but relevant for everyone:
Given the new rate cap of 23.75%, you'll have to really be thorough if you want to get funded. In particular, you should start out with the smallest loan possible -- many lenders worry that people will come onto Prosper.com, take out a huge loan, and then default -- if a borrower's credit is poor to start with, there is little incentive besides personal ethics for someone not to do so. If you can demonstrate on confirm your ethics over the Internet somehow, or use a decent proxy (I confirmed that one guy was a priest, for instance) for it -- great -- however, most people will be unable to do so. As a result, you have to think seriously about the size of your loan -- make it as small as possible, while still helping you meet your original purpose (and preferably have enough left over to set aside as a cushion for one month's payment).
9. The lender’s thought process…more closing words from GogMagog:
Lenders want reassurance. There is a persistent myth that people with bad credit squander their credit frivolously on shopping and beer. This is a persistent thought, mostly because EVERYONE knows a deadbeat like this somewhere in their lives. A clearly worded, properly spelled and capitalized, response to a question goes a long way to making the Lender feel that their money is safe.
Some Lenders perform more checks, on their potential loans than others do. These diligent Lenders are crucial to the Prosper system. They want to make sure their money is in the hands of responsible, though financially strained people. They are the ones who send you messages about your loan, or yourself, asking for more information. They also tend to report to Lender groups and mail out lists of their findings.
posted by cellardoor @ 4/03/2006 12:41:00 AM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Your suggestions were awesome,I will give it a try.
Thank You very much
sorry -- this is not an area of expertise for me -- do you have anything other than the name of the company, like what the acronym stands for?
Do you think it is unwise to give out details of your employment and other personal information that would identify you? As a borrower, you don't really know who the lenders are, and I doubt they are going to give the borrower that amount of personal information. I wonder if it isn't Prosper's responsibility to verify one's employment, rather than individual lenders?
Both as a cynic and a pragmatist, no, not really.
You should use your own judgment as to what level of risk you are willing to take on re: ID theft and internet stalking. My guess is that many people who are desperately seeking a way to avoid being evicted, and Prosper is a last resort, would make a rational decision to reveal more info to increase the probability of being funded, even if it marginally increases the risk of ID theft. Actually, in HR cases, the greater fear would be of stalking, I suppose... Just as people choose to avoid being public figures, or live in a log cabin in montana, or choose to blog w/explicit details about their lives and identities and where they went clubbing last night, people have different sets of preferences.
In fact, to a certain degree, even if you put up lots of info, all of which could be photoshoppable, and all of which has so much identifying info removed that you could have just grabbed someone else's paystub from the trash, crossed stuff out, and lenders wouldn't know the difference. The primary use of doing so nontheless, might be to signal that if you were ID thief and going to spend that much time to rip people off, you'd spend that time elsewhere.
There are a million things that would be better done by Prosper, but they aren't doing it.
Not sure I'm convinced that the majority of borrowers are desperate and poor. It's not so easy to get a personal loan. Even if you have a 75k salary and good credit, personal loans don't really drop out of a hat. It doesn't have to mean you are desperate that you are on prosper as a borrower.
Nevertheless, while it may certainly seem reasonable to give away one's address and place of work in public on a website when such a risk is being played down as some type of paranoid and unreasonable fear, it's all a matter of perception.
When the real situation is that lenders who are supposedly assuming a risk for the sake of a monetary reward expect borrowers to reveal any and all private or personal information for the privelige of maybe getting a couple of grand funded on their personal loan, it becomes clear that the request is unreasonable. I've only been reading the forums for a few days, and already it's clear to me that most lenders, like you in this post and comments, assume that the borrowers are street beggars who should consider themselves lucky you deign to step down from your mountain and toss fifty bucks their way.
When you are offering to fund the full 3 or 4 thousand dollars on someone's loan, maybe you can ask them for their cell phone number. But while your laying out a measley fifty dollars, I think you should de-inflate your ego for a minute and go with the information provided by Prosper. The credit report is pulled down, the debt to income calculated, and the identity verified. That's enough for you.
Sigh -- not particularly. I just love anonymous comments that
a)make incorrect factual assumptions about my lending practices, and amounts lent:
A small sample of my recent commitments:
Salary advance for law student w/corporate offer $3,500.00
Salary verified software developer wants to pay back family $2,290.69
Getting a new Start $1,879.73
home repairs $1,750.00
Pay Off Payday Loans!!! $1,569.00
Help my family(medical bills, home repairs, student loan) $1,500.00
Please help with STL $1,500.00
Second Chance Needed† $1,500.00
Getting rid of loose ends $1,500.00
Trying to overcome debt from divorce $1,500.00
payoff other higher interest rates $1,300.00
My Wife Needs To Go To Work ASAP $1,300.00
Need help getting on my feet $1,250.00
My Dream $1,180.00
Help me continue my education in Radiology $1,075.00
Expanding our business.... $1,050.00
auto ins deductable $1,025.00
Credit Cards Go Away...Come Again...Umm...NEVER!! (Relist) $1,003.00
JOB/ CC consolidation $1,000.00
Would like to buy a computer and pay off some medical bills $1,000.00
I NEED HELP!!!!!! $1,000.00
Therapist trying to Start Private Practice $1,000.00
IN NEED OF A 2nd CHANCE!!!!!† $1,000.00
Try try again, Really need $7k $1,000.00
Starting a web design business $990.00
Need to Consolidate little payments to get ahead!!!† $965.00
workingcapital $941.00
Emergency Loan Needed for Used Car and Secuity Deposit $800.00
student looking to consolidate bills, strengthen credit $800.00
Purchase automobile and continue education $600.61
Paying off existing Loans and having money for vacation† $600.00
Helping Ugandan Micro-Entrepreneurs $600.00
continued education for spouse $550.00
consolidate debts† $525.00
Credit Card Debt Consolidation $500.00
Please Help Me Complete Funding For Senior Year $500.00
Law Student Seeks Education Loan $500.00
Getting back up $500.00
Therapy Needed for Son $500.00
Help Me Help My Daughters Succeed†‡ $459.14
Branded with the Scarlet Letter D because I DO pay my bills!† $457.00
Regaining My Footing After Beating Cancer $400.00
Hard working college student and admin assistant seeking Loa $400.00
Consolidate & Move On $384.00
almost there...† $350.00
Help Pay off High APR Car Loan† $350.00
Help me help my credit $350.00
Need to Breathe/Sleep $334.00
Music Room†‡ $326.00
Urgent help needed! Stanford University student in crisis! $307.29
Can I assume that unless you're going to contradict yourself again (or just be illogical), that you now approve of my vetting because of my willingness to make larger bids? [Actually, if I were to make assumptions, I'd guess your next self-contradictory salvo would involve some sort of attack on the "lord of the manor" attitude I supposedly sport. Or, maybe you'll claim that I'm making the loans up.]
b)ignore the logic of my previous comment and make (factually inaccurate) ad hominem attacks based on my purported attitudes -- which even if you were correct about, still wouldn't change the facts:
“Not sure I'm convinced that the majority of borrowers are desperate and poor. It's not so easy to get a personal loan. Even if you have a 75k salary and good credit, personal loans don't really drop out of a hat. It doesn't have to mean you are desperate that you are on prosper as a borrower.”
I never said that the majority of borrowers are desperate and poor. As I stated, it is up to each borrower to decide on their risk/reward tradeoffs. I have no inherent view of whether borrowers are paupers or princes -- I do know that those who are desperate will take more risks, and those who aren't won't. I also know that the average person who is a prime borrower will have better opportunities elsewhere at better rates (On forums, I repeatedly suggest Amex Clear/Blue credit cards w/no annual fee, and 3.99% rates for BT for life), even though prime borrowers come to Prosper nonetheless.
I’m also not sure why the 75k and good credit point helps your point – even if it weren’t factually wrong (see creditboards.com for many people who will explain to you slowly and perhaps less diplomatically, how wrong you are), wouldn’t that just mean that such prime borrowers have no better alternative than subjecting themselves to vetting?
Given the diplomacy with which I conduct myself on forums not my own, I'd want you to point to specific posts of mine on forums that allow a rational individual to draw the conclusion that I, in forums or "in this post and comments, assume that the borrowers are street beggars who should consider themselves lucky you deign to step down from your mountain and toss fifty bucks their way."
I'm not sure how to make this any clearer to you, since I've already stated in my previous comment that each borrower makes decisions to disclose extra info based on their own wealth and circumstances. I've discussed choice throughout -- if you don't like how people use that choice, or if you feel the need to make counterfactual claims, I’m not sure what else I can say.
This is a free marketplace -- if lenders expect lots of info, even stupidly so, and they don't get it, they won't lend. Maybe they'll adjust their attitudes as default rates are realized, but I don't know which way that’ll go. In the same fashion, borrowers will choose their behavior based on whether or not they get funded w/ or w/o extra info, and not whether someone tells them they should or shouldn’t do so because lenders are or aren’t egotistical.
Why do you continually miss the main point here -- if you don't want to release info, don't offer it – who cares if lenders are assholes or not (which I’m not)?
c)Make comments that say, you should be happy with X, because you should be happy with X.
“But while your laying out a measley[sic] fifty dollars, I think you should de-inflate your ego for a minute and go with the information provided by Prosper. The credit report is pulled down, the debt to income calculated, and the identity verified. That's enough for you.”
1)Why is my ego relevant (ignore the fact that I’ve already refuted you factually by pointing out that I’m typically not putting down $50 at a time)? If I were actually a poor but shrewd college student studying business who’s being paid minimum wage to represent a rich guy who wishes to invest in Prosper, and I have really poor self esteem, but ability to think critically about debt/convince others to give me info before investing, what difference would that make?
2)There is no informative value whatsoever in your assertion that going with the info provided by Prosper is enough for me.
FYI, I’ve long endorsed the vetting the vetters behavior on forums and off -- as I've already stated, I offer in my official Prosper profile the opportunity for people I ask for extra info to contact me at a verifiable and signal-laden email.
Well you have a wonderful sense of outrage and indignation. Perfect for a blogger. But your long-winded reply doesn't really change anything. Your blog post is telling borrowers that posting their employment information is important to a good listing. You did not present it as merely something one may or may not choose to do, as the wind so moves them. It is, then, a totally valid position to take that this is an unreasonable request.
The fact that you personally made a few larger loans merely means I am incorrect in assuming that you personally don't make larger loans. It does not, of course, in any way undermine the point that asking for someones work phone number for a fifty dollar loan is unreasonable. Did you state in your blog post that you only felt it was necessary to share your work information with those making large committments? Or to those lenders who will give out their personal information in return?
By the way, don't think I didn't notice your comment about anonymity. It seems even in blog posts lenders may demand one's name, rank and serial number eh?
Its certainly fine that you now claim you don't think all the borrowers are beggars looking for a handout, but if you think that position was obvious from your blog post or subsequent comments you are mistaken. You take too kind a view of your own position. You assume a benefit of the doubt being given to you that is not necessarily being given.
I grant that you may not personally have this lord of the manor attitude. Fine. It wasn't apparent, but fine. But it exists. And borrowers being asked to hand out their work phone numbers to total strangers in exchange for small loans at high interest rates remains unreasonable. In the short time I've been reading the forums at prosper, I've seen quite a bit of the mightier-than-thou, you should be thanking us attitude from the lenders.
When I joined this site, it was following a story about the founder and his idea in Time magazine. I came here thinking what a clever business idea, if only they can find people willing to borrow. Now, having seen how it works, it doesn't come across at all as a business relationship between borrowers and lenders. It very much comes across as a personal handout relationship that is decidedly one-sided.
Maybe I haven't read enough of the posts in the forums to make that call. But that's the way it appears after a few days. I wonder how many more people see the same?
"I’m also not sure why the 75k and good credit point helps your point – even if it weren’t factually wrong (see creditboards.com for many people who will explain to you slowly and perhaps less diplomatically, how wrong you are), wouldn’t that just mean that such prime borrowers have no better alternative than subjecting themselves to vetting?"
I'll visit that site, but I don't see how direct experience could be lying to me. 75k salary and B credit doesn't make personal loans a guarantee. Or is that not what you meant?
*eyeroll*
"Well you have a wonderful sense of outrage and indignation. Perfect for a blogger."
Also perfect for anyone faced w/logically flawed, ill-informed, ad hominem, arguments -- but hey, more ad hominem attacks when no real response is possible'll help you out, given the lack of alternatives, I suppose.
"But your long-winded reply doesn't really change anything."
It does -- it points out that you made
1.illogical comments
2.self-contradictory comments
3.factually incorrect comments
4.statements that are inherently unprovable unless you can somehow read my mind.
Please reread my previous post if you need a reminder.
"Your blog post is telling borrowers that posting their employment information is important to a good listing."
Yes
" You did not present it as merely something one may or may not choose to do, as the wind so moves them. It is, then, a totally valid position to take that this is an unreasonable request."
Wrong again. See:
1)The definition of the word "ideal," and also see my sidebar:
"Useful Posts for Borrowers:
Advice for borrowers on writing the ideal loan listing"
2)see my "An example of an acceptable, though certainly imperfect, listing:" which does not contain an employer's name.
3)"For example, saying that “I work at a big firm in Atlanta” is much worse than providing as much of the following information as possible (fictional examples):"
Look up the definition of "much worse." This does not say that you have to provide detail, but that more detail is always better than less for the purposes of increasing the likelihood of loan funding. If you don't care about loan funding to such a degree, any and all of this is optional.
"The fact that you personally made a few larger loans merely means I am incorrect in assuming that you personally don't make larger loans. It does not, of course, in any way undermine the point that asking for someones work phone number for a fifty dollar loan is unreasonable."
Not the point you made. You implied that all lenders are making $50 loans and asking for work numbers to do so. You are wrong, factually in my case, and logically overall, because you did not research all lending behavior and
1)correlate small bids w/asking for extra info, and
2)your critique is wrong, insofar as people who want to give out work numbers to get $50 should feel free to do so
3)your critique is pointless as long as some people ask for more detail, and then make big bids. If you were claiming that some people ask for more info than they "deserve" in return for small bids, that would be irrelevant to whether some lenders put down enough money to make a difference to borrowers in return for putting up extra info.
"Did you state in your blog post that you only felt it was necessary to share your work information with those making large committments? Or to those lenders who will give out their personal information in return?"
Of course not. I state that you should give out as much info as possible, period, if you want to increase the probability of loan funding. Whether lenders give lots of money or a little, or whether lenders are willing to provide their own info first, is immaterial to this point. Both of these issues are important to me personally, but not relevant here.
As a general logic point, if I wish to explain "how can one be as good as possible at badminton," a valid response would include lots and lots of expensive and potentially injurious to other aspects of life tasks, such as "you cannot have a social life, or children, if you want to be all that you can be." The existence of world badminton champions who have a family in no way detracts from the hypothetical badminton post. The question of whether it makes sense to deprioritize all other life activities vs badminton is a valid one, but irrelevant to the "how can one be as good as possible at badminton" post.
In general, I find it rather patronizing that you assume that borrowers are incapable of deciding on their own what info to provide, and what not to provide.
"By the way, don't think I didn't notice your comment about anonymity. It seems even in blog posts lenders may demand one's name, rank and serial number eh?"
Why would I make a barbed comment and then think that you wouldn't notice it? If anything, I'm trying to draw attention to your failings. And you do realize that name, rank, and serial number are the perfectly acceptable minimal forms of ID that should always be providable to the enemy, right -- and you fail to do even that?
"Its certainly fine that you now claim you don't think all the borrowers are beggars looking for a handout, but if you think that position was obvious from your blog post or subsequent comments you are mistaken. You take too kind a view of your own position. You assume a benefit of the doubt being given to you that is not necessarily being given."
No, you are the one who made a positive claim: that I have a lord of the manor attitude toward borrowers. Thus, the burden of the proof falls upon you.
"I grant that you may not personally have this lord of the manor attitude. Fine. It wasn't apparent, but fine. But it exists. And borrowers being asked to hand out their work phone numbers to total strangers in exchange for small loans at high interest rates remains unreasonable. In the short time I've been reading the forums at prosper, I've seen quite a bit of the mightier-than-thou, you should be thanking us attitude from the lenders."
This is equally pointless. Whether or not certain people on forums do or don't have patronizing attitudes is irrelevant to getting people who need money funded.
1)Forums are completely unlinked to lenders or borrowers. In anonymous and cowardly form, much as you are doing here, you could be anonymously posting on forums as a lender who asks for borrowers' first born children, and then point to such posts as evidence that lenders are evil.
2)Say lots of lenders do post w/this attitude -- who cares? How is this relevant to my post's point, which is that to maximize one's loan funding probabilities, one should provide as much info as possible? Be the lenders St Francis or Beezelbub, this does not change.
3)Who are you to say whether loans are small, or rates are high, when the loan can make the difference between having a home and eviction, and payday loan rates can be in the 100's of %, and thus, giving out work numbers is unreasonable? Again, you are trivializing the needs of many borrowers who do turn to prosper as a last resort.
"When I joined this site, it was following a story about the founder and his idea in Time magazine. I came here thinking what a clever business idea, if only they can find people willing to borrow. Now, having seen how it works, it doesn't come across at all as a business relationship between borrowers and lenders. It very much comes across as a personal handout relationship that is decidedly one-sided."
I only have factual and philosophical disagreements with you on this one, rather than logic holes. There are plenty of people willing to borrow, far more than there is lending supply. See various prosper data aggregators for more info. I'm also not sure what you mean by handout relationship. Are social loans, like the ones for ugandan micoentrepreneurs handouts, and are you saying these are bad?
"Maybe I haven't read enough of the posts in the forums to make that call. But that's the way it appears after a few days. I wonder how many more people see the same?"
Yes. See point above about anonymity of forums. And I have no idea, nor do I care -- this post is intended to give borrowers as complete a set of ways to increase probability of funding as possible, and nothing else. There will always be people like you who make unfounded arguments, draw incorrect conclusions, all while hurting the parties that they purport to want to assist.
""I’m also not sure why the 75k and good credit point helps your point – even if it weren’t factually wrong (see creditboards.com for many people who will explain to you slowly and perhaps less diplomatically, how wrong you are), wouldn’t that just mean that such prime borrowers have no better alternative than subjecting themselves to vetting?""
"I'll visit that site, but I don't see how direct experience could be lying to me. 75k salary and B credit doesn't make personal loans a guarantee. Or is that not what you meant?"
1.My contention is that insofar as prime borrowers come to Prosper, it is mostly because they don't know enough about how to use the credit system to borrow money from big corporations. Alternatively, they may not want to disclose info that banks require. (also possible that they like P2P, they hate big corps, they think they can explain the concept of a biz better here than to a numerical scoring system, etc.)
2.If it is hard to get loans w/such prime info, then why shoud Prosper lending require less info that borrowing from banks?
As to 2, the question is not whether Prosper should require less information. The question is whether borrowers should be making that information publicly available via prosper. Two different things. It would make perfect sense for Prosper to verify employment.
I'm sure the lenders are all very professional, but the chance that they won't be so is much higher than with, say, Bank of America. It's one thing when some corporate functionary calls to verify your employment, with the practiced monotonous drone of such a position. It's another when Joe Smith from Palookaville calls up and stumbles through some type of "investigation" over your office phone line. And that's the most benign of the potential hazardous outcomes.
Maybe I and everyone I know are simply uninformed about how to obtain loans from corporations, but my personal experience informs me it's a lot more difficult than I think you are implying, and that the definition of "prime" seems pretty different from your definition and the banks. I suppose that is beside the point. Like you say, there can be many reasons to borrow from prosper. Potentially among those reasons is the relative anonymity. Prosper knows who you are, but no one else has to, for example.
The main point remains the same for me. What I expected when I came to prosper and what I found when I got there are very different. The process screams unprofessional, the forums appear to often be personal battlegrounds, and the process has shaped itself into something ugly.
The impression it gives? Those who have holding it over the nose of those who have not, demanding they dance for their supper, and be grateful for the opportunity.
I have no intention of borrowing at prosper anymore. I held onto the idea of lending a little longer, but that too I've decided not to do.
So far, thanks to the users, it seems to me prosper is going to go down as one of those good idea, bad execution websites. They simply gave the individuals too much latitude, and it appears it's been abused.
Different annonymous here...
I think it's too dang early to tell whether or not this site will go down in flames. Propser needs the ability to grow and become a public data mine before we can make that determiniation.
The "dance for your supper" loans come for the E,HR,and NC crowd, ESPECIALLY those that come from rate capped states.
My model for a rate is as follows: Base rate (currently what I can get from high yield saving which is FDIC insured) + profit margin/opportunity cost (for locking my money up for three years)+ risk factor. The risk factor is a generalized figure, and with the rate cap, HR loans are break-even at the very very best. The only way to make them profitable is to change the risk factor. The only way we can change the risk factor is to remove the individual from the masses, and evaluate themselves for who they are. That requires more info than prosper provides.
Some people *do* require explanation. One guy has/had 61 CURRENT delinquencies. If you have 61 delinquencies, I ain't lending to you without an explanation. Period. One woman has 11 CURRENT delinquencies, yet claims everything is very very old. Something ain't right, and I want to know why.
Finally, those that have to do the dance pretty much OFFER to do the dance.
Wow. All I can say is thank you cellar door. I am just a poor guy, really poor with bad credit. A lot of strikes against me. It is encouraging to think that the changes I am making in my life matter and that someone will take the time to look into my private life to see if I am what I say. It is great that the human factor has found a home in the lending process. Thank you. You come across as an informed person trying to help others give and receive help.
Peace and may God's hand be upon you and His Grace and Mercy and Blessings be upon you.
I just discovered Prosper today and am investigating whether it would be a good place for me to loan money. I saw a perplexing table on Savage Number regarding Prosper Stats: http://savagenumber.com/summary/stats What does it mean when it says successful loan count for AA rated loans: 729 out of 1875 39%. Is it saying the rest of the AA rated loans defaults?
I look forward to hearing from you.
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