Owner: Prosperous Land URL:http://prosperousland.blogspot.com Join Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:42:28 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Keeping an eye on Prosper and peer to peer lending. Site statistics:Click here
The Quietly Changing State Interest Rate Limits 2007-12-02 10:03:00 While reviewing Prosper's state lending limits to see if everyone had bumped up to 36%, I noticed that some of the values had drifted a bit from the last officially announced state limit change back in May. At the time, I did not capture all the rates (only the new ones), so I do not have a complete picture. Prosper, being the wily data hiders that they are, have blocked Google and the Way Back
Read more:Changing
, State
, Interest
, Limits
We Wish You A Merry Linkfest 2007-12-01 09:02:00 Unlike many stores, I at least had the decency to avoid Christmas references until after Thanksgiving. Now onto the giftwrapped, linky goodness.
My MicroFinance - Zzzzz… Zopa.com
Have you ever been promised something, then that day comes and you don’t get exactly what you were told you were getting (kind of like Christmas morning)? Well, that is how I feel about Zopa.com. I remember hearing and
Read more:Merry
Subprime Meltdown Heatmap 2007-11-30 13:55:00 I keep watching the housing market and sub-prime mess because it's an indicator of states that will be distressed and have higher odds default for loan issued to homeowners in those markets (and folks employed in home-related industries). If you're not content to just work with statistics, the Consumerist published a heatmap of the unfun housing situation. Look at all those states dressing up in
Read more:Subprime
, Meltdown
Technology Behind Prosper's New Forums 2007-11-30 10:09:00 112233 over on prospers.org forums has noticed that the new Prosper forums are using Community Server 2007 as the technology base for the forums. I suspect that the moderation features were part of the considerations.
Moderation Capabilities Feature Description Moderated Discussions All forum discussions support full moderation workflow. Forums
can be individually configured for moderation
Read more:Technology
Prosper's Finovate Presentation Video Available 2007-11-29 15:25:00 Remember those new features that Prosper unveiled at the Finvoate but didn't want to talk about? Well, the Finovate folks have finally published the video. Almost everything talked about has already been implemented (except the custom portfolios), so it's mostly interesting for historical purposes.
My Take On Prosper's New Forums 2007-11-29 10:10:00 Yesterday I mentioned that I don't like the new Prosper forums but I hesitated to list my reasons. With just a day of mulling, it wasn't enough time to be thoughtful. After sleeping on it, I do not like it and find that the change is a big step backward, with the possibility of Prosper re-establishing parity over time if they stop acting authoritarian.
I will start with the good. I like that
Read more:Forums
Name The Date Competition Continues 2007-11-28 15:21:00 The "When Will Ads Appear Competition" is running and I'm still taking guesses.
I think it's likely that Prosper will place ads for some well meaning financial institution along with the Low Estimated Return warning (probably for CDs or high interest savings accounts). The reader whose guess is closest to the date the ads go live will get a copy of Banker To The Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle
Prosper's New Forums Not So Hot 2007-11-28 12:49:00 Prosper has unveiled their new forums (see zcommodore here and here, or RateLadder here) and they've not been well received. It's very nice that they tied the forum IDs to the Prosper lender/borrower ID. Unfortunately, that's the best I can say. My overall opinion is that it has become a forum in name only. It has become a walled city - guards at every corner making sure folks don't run with
Read more:Forums
Thinking About Lending 2007-11-28 10:38:00 Calculated Risk is one of my regular reading blogs for watching the sub-prime housing implosion. In the process, however, there's some commentary on lending that is relevant for Prosper lenders. Tanta had a long missive on what defines sub-prime, and I find it to be a good read for anyone lending on Prosper.
That said, what it’s about is just working through the complexity of the variations on
Read more:Lending
I Can't Believe It's Not Linkfest 2007-11-27 22:03:00 Tastes just like linkfest but with half the calories [*]
zcommodore: Loan size going up
I noticed that, while the number of loans being made had appeared to be going down, the size of loans is up significantly this month. (Note this graph shows only the first half of November.)
I suspect the reasons for this are that people with very good credit, like the ones I pointed out yesterday that were
Back In Action After Thanksgiving 2007-11-27 22:02:00 My family and I have safely returned to the land of hippies and music Austin, Tx. I'm getting familiar to the internet again and will return to my usual daily-ish postings once my brain has been returned to it's full and upright position (just one more night of sleep - baby willing). Then I can rail against the new forums, sloppy statistics handling, and state interest rate caps. You know, good
Read more:Action
, Thanksgiving
New Forums Coming Soon 2007-11-26 19:51:00 I return from a peaceful Thanksgiving vacation all psyched up to see what new calamities have struck Prosper, and the forums are down:
This forum has been taken off line in anticipation of the launch of a new forum next week. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
We look forward to seeing you on the new forums.
Sincerely,
Prosper
There's an update going in at 11:00 PST tonight.
Read more:Forums
, Coming Soon
Warm & Fuzzy Borrower Story 2007-11-25 11:38:00 In the spirit of Thanksgiving, it's time for a warm fuzzy and someone giving thanks. It's good to remember that there are real people borrowing on Prosper and they are trying to better themselves. Here's one borrower's story:
I would like to give a little update on what happened in the past few months since I am not that much around in the forums anymore.
Naturally my credit score has improved
Read more:Fuzzy
, Borrower
Prosper Replies On Prospers.org Scrubbing 2007-12-17 14:34:00 I did get an reply from inside Prosper regarding the prospers.org scrubbing. One of Prosper's big concerns with the .org relates to security. Until I read this, I did not truly appreciate how fanatical they were about personal and security. In retrospect, I should not have been surprised based on my dealings with other financial institutions, but I had not considered this level of detail before.
Read more:Prospers
Prosper Scrubbing References To Prospers.org 2007-12-17 11:36:00 I was going to let the moderation of blog comments go by without additional note. There was no reason to expect anything different over the new forum policies. I was even going to let the Wikipedia bruhaha go without much of a stink. Every company's marketing department tries this. Most quit when they realize that they'll get caught. No harm, no foul.
However, Prosper has now cracked down on all
Read more:Prospers
Chatty "Prosper" User On Forums 2007-12-16 09:15:00 I have no definitive proof, but it seems that the Prosper forums have loosened up some from the initial crackdown. Links to non-Prosper websites (that's right, those tubes aren't just a fad) are being allowed and it's not all goodness and light. Although I suspect that all posts are still being checked before they go live, there doesn't seem to be the same level of filtering as before. More
Read more:Forums
We Linkfest, You Decide 2007-12-15 08:57:00 That's right. Fair and balanced linking. After editorial review. And my personal slant. And the bribes (I'm fair and balanced in my bribe taking, though).
zommodore ponders Prosper's growth (round 1 and round 2 - round 2 shown):
As you can see from the various graphs available on these 3rd party websites, Prosper is growing. My concern is that Prosper is not growing fast enough to satisfy the
Borrower Rate Guidance 2007-12-14 12:30:00 With the latest Prosper site update, they added a borrower rate guidance. This feature helps borrowers pick an interest rate that will be successful in the auction process. Previously, Prosper would suggest rates based on where loans had funded at. Experience had shown, however, that listings that started with a relatively high interest rate would get bids and would eventually be bid down while
Read more:Borrower
Prosper's November Market Summary 2007-12-13 07:44:00 On Tuesday, Prosper released their November
market summary reporting on their marketplace statistics for the month of November. This followed the usual format, and this time there's a few things I want to call out. First, the estimated annual return for the Prosper Select Index seems to be collapsing. Comparing the November statistics against the October numbers reveals a notable drop in
Read more:Market
, Summary
Prosper Updates On Loan Payment Fee Discrepency 2007-12-12 08:13:00 Back in October, traveler505 observed that Prosper was pulling group and servicing fees from loan payments made for late loans and that this was against the terms of the lender agreement. Prosper followed up a few weeks later and noted that they were going to get things fixed up the way they should be. With no further word, and no fixes, folks have continued to press for the resolution to happen
Read more:Payment
The Forum Devil You Know 2007-12-11 07:24:00 When Prosper put up the new forums, they added a requirement that posts be pre-approved before they become visible. This had the (predictable) consequence of annoying the frequent posters who enjoy the banter of carrying on near real-time conversations on the forums. A number of these folks have negative opinions and went looking for an outlet. Enter the New York Times. Freakonomics author and
Read more:Forum
, Devil
Prosper Collections Chasing Payday Payout 2007-12-10 07:15:00 Several prosper lenders had spotted an anomaly on Nov 30. Lots of lenders had late loans suddenly show payments in transit at the same time. zcommodore tracked down the explaination.
Prosper has done analysis that shows ACH withdraws are more successful on paydays. Therefore, Proser has initiated ACH withdraws from some late borrowers accounts to begin processing on 11/30/07. New actions taken
Read more:Chasing
, Payday
Zopa's Unveiling A Big Let Down 2007-12-09 09:55:00 Everyone's commenting on Zopa's US launch, so I feel the need to get my two cents in. If you've somehow missed it, just skim the blog headlines:
RateLadder: Zopa Launches in United StatesWiseClerk: First impressions of the Zopa US sitePLP: Zopa Promises to be DifferentNetBanker: Zopa Launches U.S. Loan Marketplace Monday NightLazy Man And Money: Zopa Launch ImminentFor lenders, this is a huge
Read more:Unveiling
National Lampoon's Christmas Linkfest 2007-12-08 08:24:00 All I have to say is "SQUIRREL!!!"
fred93 posted an update on Prosper's default rates and he wasn't too keen on how they're calculated:
One problem with the 2.7% number is found in the choice of numerator. The numerator in this fraction includes only loans that have been declared "default" by Prosper. Prosper ages highly delinquent loans quite some time before declaring them "default". Loans
Read more:National
, Christmas
Tip To Borrowers - Prepayments Are Your Friend 2007-12-24 09:58:00 Prosper Borrowers
have the option to make payments above and beyond the Prosper calculated monthly payment, referred to as prepayments. Lenders have a wide variety of reactions to this practice, ranging from happiness that the loan is being paid back to annoyance that they didn't earn as much interest as was expected.
For borrowers, however, prepayments are nothing but a good thing. For
Unannounced Feature In Prosper's Latest Upgrade 2007-12-20 10:07:00 In addition to the previously announced features in Prosper's Tuesday night upgrade-a-thon, I think a few marketing tricks came along for the ride. After placing a bid this morning, I got a subtle reminder of their referral program.
While I'll have to admit that this could've been added in an earlier upgrade, I don't remember it. It looks like Prosper's pushing pretty hard to pick up new lenders
Pre-Holiday Prosper Upgrade 2007-12-19 13:02:00 Prosper finished a 5 hour upgrade session last night and has deployed a few new features in what is probably the last upgrade for the year (no doubt followed by chugging some spiked eggnog and getting out of dodge). I found three lender-centric changes that caught my attention.
First, Prosper tweaked with the lender statistics reporting page to adjust the Active Loan Summary section as was
Read more:Holiday
New And Shiny Collections Statistics 2007-12-18 12:45:00 I had proposed a new way to look at collections progress back in early December. This method took to snapshots of Prosper's nightly data export, one month apart, and looked at how the lone status changed over time. I took my first snapshot on December 1, but by some fluke of luck, it turns out that I had the Nov 1 download laying around a second computer, so now we get an early look. The
Read more:Statistics
, Shiny
Lending Club Lifts Loan Limits Nationwide - Prosper Next? 2007-12-12 13:43:00 I was so fixated on the community wars that I completely missed Lending
Club securing the ability to lend nation wide without interest rate restrictions. From the increasingly ill-named Prosper Lending Review:
Lending Club has finally eliminated all this confusion – they are available to borrowers in all states and are not bound by state interest rate limits any more. In the official
Read more:Limits
, Nationwide
The Linkfest Clause 2007-12-26 10:15:00 Merry Christmas to one and all. We're an equal-opportunity blog, however, and would like to also extend a happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, and Festivus to you too! And have a joyous Boxing Day too.
My Experience As An HR Borrower
It is possible for a high risk borrower to get a loan on Prosper successfully. Don't expect overnight money. This is a process that takes time, energy,
Read more:Clause
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