Prosperous LandProsperous LandKeeping an eye on Prosper and peer to peer lending. Articles
Vicarious Live-Blogging: Prosper Days
2008-02-26 07:21:00 Since I'm not actually at Prosper days, I have to vicariously live-blog from home. Consider this a Prosper Days linkfest. If you're looking for staying up on what's happening, try IRC. I'll post more as the reports roll in (right after the late night party crowd reconnects with their laptops). On to day 1. Prospers.org: "Live reporting from PD in IRC" thread. Prosper Lending Review: "Keynote More About: Blogging
Following Prosper Days
2008-02-25 23:40:00 Prosper Days is in full swing in San Francisco. In addition to a number of new features rolled out for PD like user-customizable portfolios, more search criteria, interest rate changes, and a host of other tweaks, attendees get to chew over the minutia of running Prosper. There are no live feeds, so the best way to keep track of what's happening is to venture onto the Prospers.org IRC feed, where More About: Prosper
End Of FANAFI Junkmail Saga
2008-02-21 20:33:00 If you missed out, Jeff of the Prosper group FANAFI Finance and the now closed My Microfinance blog had accused Prosper of selling their personally identifiable information to junk mailers. After some back and forth, Jeff announced a renewed interest in Prosper but would not talk about how the junk mail bruhaha had been resolved. It was just hanging out there. A few things have happened that More About: Saga
Prosper Update Right Before Prosper Days
2008-02-21 20:30:00 What are the odds of an update to the Prosper website right before Prosper Days ? Maintenance notice: The Prosper site will be taken offline for maintenance at 8:00 PM Pacific, February 21, 2008 and should be back online by 1:00 AM. I'm sure they're just screwing with us. There's no big updates coming. After all, you have to reboot windows machines every once in a while and they didn't want the More About: Update
Collections To Swap To AmSher Any Day Now (TM)
2008-02-20 19:47:00 Now that Prosper has yanked most delinquent loans from Penncro, it's been a waiting game to see when AmSher would actually start attempting collections. And a frustrating one at that. One of Prosper's friendly grumpy-lender-handlers has suggested that they're trying for the end of this week to get loans transfered over to AmSher. Was he right and will they make it? Who knows, but it would be a More About: Collections , Swap
Now Georgia's On The Danger List
2008-02-18 20:19:00 From Calculated Risk, another good reason why Georgia should be on your danger list (with California, Florida, New Mexico, and Arizona) For the most part, Atlanta didn't participate in the price boom. This graph compares the Case-Shiller house price index for Atlanta and Miami. Although prices rose much quicker in Miami, and are now falling faster, Atlanta has a higher percentage of loans in More About: List , Danger
Cloning Prosper
2008-02-18 06:00:00 This guy just doesn't seem to get the hint that Prosper isn't quite a slap-dash operation (web infrastructure wise). He's been posting on various rent-a-coder sites, trying to find someone who'll throw together a clone of the Prosper website. It's been amusing to watch. This latest posting continues the trend... Need a price to clone www.prosper.com I would like you to actually sign up and look More About: Cloning
The Great Collector Conversion Is At Hand
2008-02-14 01:14:00 As observed in the prospers.org forums and blogged about by ZCommodore, Prosper has begun migrating collections accounts away from Penncro over to their newest collections agency, AmSher. Prosper had previously announced that this transition would be occurring in an e-mail to some lenders (not all received it) allowing them to opt-out of the transition: We have received a number of complaints More About: Great , Hand , Conversion , Collector
Junk Mail Seller Revisited
2008-02-13 20:06:00 Jeff at My Microfinance had previous claimed that Prosper was selling his address to junk mail groups. Even though there was reason to question the accuracy of his claim, he ranted and raved with the best of them. Since these claims, Jeff posted that he was lending on Prosper again with this cryptic reply: Prosper.com has rectified the issue with me in private. Plain and simple… confused yet? I More About: Mail , Seller , Junk , Junk Mail
Ity-Bity Teenie-Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Linkfest
2008-02-12 16:34:00 It's been too long since my last linkfest, so time to have at it... Prosper Steering Borrowers Away From 25K Loans With my recent loan on Prosper I tried to keep an eye out for interesting stories along the way. In this case I found something I didn’t like as a lender… Prosper explicitly told me not to put up a 25K listing. LoanChimp - Battle Of The Titans Just the other day my average loan More About: Yellow , Polka Dot
$7.2M In January Prosper Loans, But How About February
2008-02-11 19:30:00 As was foreshadowed, Prosper succeeded in passing $7M by booking $7.18M in loans in January . This is good news for Prosper, but there are shadows on the horizon. Lending Stat's most recent monthly estimate for February is a meager $5.25M. This number has been growing throughout February, so I suspect that Prosper succeeded in pulling a few loans into January that may have otherwise cleared around More About: Loans
January Prosper Collections Report
2008-02-05 20:34:00 This is part of my ongoing series monitoring collections efficiency (December's report for comparison). For a reminder on the methodology, I took a snapshot of all of Prosper 's loans on January 1 and compared their current status against those same loans on February 1. Presumably, loans that don't get further behind have some kind of collections activity happen succeed. The statistics are below. More About: Report , Collections
Chimp's Take On Portfolios and Guidance
2008-02-01 17:34:00 LoanChimp has taken to writing about Prosper's statistics behind the portfolios and lender bidding guidance. They're good reads and worth understanding if you're interested in more than push-button lending. This is not to say that Prosper's advances here are bad - far from it. Generating statistics from actual loan data is a huge improvement over the Experian data. The problem is that this data More About: Portfolios
Junk Mail Bruhaha
2008-01-30 23:33:00 My Microfinance has started a bit of a controversy by claiming that Prosper is selling their personal information to direct-mail marketing organizations. So recently I’ve had a HUGE surge in junk mail, junk email and junk phone calls from people in the past few months asking for a fictitious company (FANAFI Foundation). When I asked one of them today where they got my business name (FANAFI More About: Mail , Junk , Junk Mail
Using P2P Lending For Free Credit Reports
2008-01-29 20:00:00 My Money Blog has published one of those slightly underhanded tactics that have been known to P2P lending nerds for a while. Prosper person-to-person lending offers up another perk - a free credit score for prospective borrowers. If you’re a lender already, it’s not too difficult to become a borrower. I just had to verify my address and phone numbers, and they offered up my credit profile. You More About: Credit , Free , Lending
Prosper Threatening $7 Million Month In January
2008-01-28 17:13:00 LendingStats recently added a terrific feature that extrapolates the dollar amount of loans expected to completely in a month. They've been estimating January to be a $7M month for over a week, and it looks like it's an actual possibility with Prosper already booking $6.35M on the month. This is a dramatic turn around from September ($5.44 M), though it hasn't gotten close to April's $8.82M. More About: Million , Month
Prosper Adds Another Collection Agency
2008-01-26 17:01:00 I just received the official announcement of the new collection agency that RateLadder mentioned a few days ago. Dear Mike, We are pleased to announce that Prosper Marketplace has added a new collection agency – AmSher. AmSher is a privately held receivables management firm based in Birmingham, Alabama. Starting out in the retail trade in 1939, it migrated to collections More About: Agency
Prosperous Land: The Missing Posts
2008-01-25 21:09:00 Yes, I have befallen the curse of the idiot blogger. In early January I put up several noteworthy posts (if I say so myself) while running back and forth to Las Vegas. Little did I know that I had completely forgotten that it was 2008 and entered the posts as if they were written in January 2007. So, for those who completely missed out because they were, you know, in 2008, here's the rundown on More About: Land , Missing , Posts
Additional Details On Prosper's Default Sale
2008-01-25 20:51:00 One of the advantages of tracking how loans age is that some interesting tid-bits appear. Prosper finished a just-in-time-for-tax-year debt sale at the end of December. While researching the loan aging during December, I extracted a few details about the debt sale. Of the 702 loans that transitioned to default from Dec 1, 2007 to January 1, 2008, 672 were 4+ months late and 30 were 3 months late More About: Sale , Details
Mr. Toad's Wild, Prosperous Ride
2008-01-22 16:38:00 If you're just waking up and checking the TV, radio, or internet, you may have noticed that the Fed just dropped interest rates 0.75%, the stock market is down 3%, depending on the index you look at and when you check, and it's not a good day for corporate profits either (BoA and Wachovia, DuPont). In other words, the financial markets are freaking out. The financial boogyman has appeared, More About: Ride , Wild
Americans In Debt, Lend Conservatively
2008-01-18 16:37:00 The articles on US's bipolar relationship with debt will continue to appear at regular intervals. This is just the latest. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., two of the nation's largest banks, on Wednesday joined a growing chorus warning that the subprime mortgage mess is just the start of a sweeping lending crisis. And some fear that consumers falling behind on all kinds of loan More About: Debt , Americans , Lend
Brains In Vegas Stay In Vegas
2008-01-18 00:02:00 CES and Las Vegas were great, but my brain hasn't recovered. Instead of something insightful, you get a linkfest. How I Overcame My Fear of Lending Money on Prosper.com I’ve invested in the stock market for more than 15 years. I own mutual funds that invest in junk bonds, emerging markets, micro cap stocks and other very risky investments. I’ve lived through severe market downturns like we saw More About: Brains , Stay
Color Me Stunned
2008-01-16 16:52:00 RateLadder posted late last night that Prosper has been e-mailing lenders regarding their new foray into collections via legal judgments. They have provided a process by which lenders may opt-in to the legal proceedings. The purpose of this email is to inform you of your right to choose what action you would like to take with regard to the accounts of the legal collection test currently underway More About: Color
Prosper Adjusts Portfolio, Lender Bidding Guidance Criteria
2008-01-12 17:10:00 Just as they had done last month, Prosper has yet again refreshed the portfolio and lender bidding guidance statistics. Unlike last time, these changes are large and significant. Both are now making extensive use of DTI and loan amount, two known risk factors that Prosper has not previously controlled. For the portfolios, Prosper has added additional standing order criteria based on DTI, Loan More About: Portfolio , Criteria , Bidding
December Collections Report
2008-01-10 09:32:00 If a 150" flat panel isn't enough for you, how about some collections info... This is part of my ongoing series monitoring collections efficiency (November's report for comparison). For a reminder on the methodology, I took a snapshot of the loans on Dec 1 and compared this to the same loans on Jan 1. The statistics are below. Dec 1 Status TotalGot BetterStayed The SameGot Worse Paid 1808 More About: Report , Collections , December
Prosper's Poor Collections
2007-10-24 02:14:00 It has been an axiom that Prosper's collections need some, shall we say, improvement. I think it's important to back up this axiom with some hard data. Fortunately, Prosper provides some useful statistics for analyzing their default rate. The easy answer is to look at their collection agency statistics. I'm only going to look at Penncro's collection information as they handle a large majority of More About: Collections , Poor
Distress Rate Widens For High Dollar Loans
2007-10-23 19:57:00 While doing a regular update on my personal lending tables (interest rates to charge versus various credit criteria), I noticed that the distress rate penalty for high dollar loans (>= $10k) has increased dramatically in the last two months. Distress rates refer to loans that are late in any possible way, either 15 days, 1-3 months, 4+ months, or in default. In August, I calculated the following More About: Loans , Dollar , High , Rate , Doll
Can Borrowers Eat On $100 A Month?
2007-10-21 21:10:00 There's been a running discussion on whether borrowers who claim that they spend almost nothing on month on food (see here, here, and here for recent random examples) are full of it. The credibility threshold seems to be around $100 / person. One of the examples claims $200 for a family of four. Is this doable? The first thing to consider is that other personal finance bloggers seem to believe More About: Month , Mont
Here A Link, There A Link, Everywhere A Link-Link
2007-10-19 22:45:00 Old McLink er had some links, E-I-E-I-O... Visible Banking did a video interview with Chris Larson right after his Finovate presentation. Was he careful not to talk about features that may or may not be appearing in the future? You be the judge. Peer-to-Peer Lending Offers Solution for Strapped Consumers: A YEAR AGO, Nicole Newberry was in a financial hole so deep that she had trouble making
Is Prosper Going Flash?
More articles from this author:2007-10-19 20:22:00 Prosper is searching for some freelance web designers in Silicon Valley. No surprises there, other than their interest in Flash and ActionScript development experience. Prosper doesn't appear to use Flash right now (not that it's a bad thing). This may be an indicator towards a website refresh. Their site's design style is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was More About: Prosper , Going , Goin 1, 2, 3 |
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