Comments on: P2P Lending Marketplace Prosper Gets Off The Bench, Debuts Open Market Initiative

By: Wild Woman Chocolate get a loan paid down by Pertuity Direct

Wild Woman Chocolate get a loan paid down by Pertuity Direct — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:07:08 +0000

[...] P2P Lending Marketplace Prosper Gets Off The Bench, Debuts Open Market Initiative (techcrunch.com) [...]

By: SEC Greenlights Prosper; P2P Lending Resumes In 14 States, More Coming

SEC Greenlights Prosper; P2P Lending Resumes In 14 States, More Coming — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:56:54 +0000

[...] SEC’s approval of Prosper’s secondary marketplace, which enables people to loan money directly to other individual and institutional investors, comes a couple of months after the startup had already reignited its lending platform in the State of California. [...]

By: snarky

snarky — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:48:40 +0000

This is a good point.

If I look at my investments, I have almost the same result. I think I am negative 1% return for my Prosper investment in 2008, compared to negative 30% for the rest of my portfolio.

Of course, I’ll never recover the timesuck of selecting all those $50 loans…

By: Lattie

Lattie — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:05:00 +0000

There are tax laws pertaining to loaning out money. If you make money from the interest, the interest is your income. Your principle if you lose money, can be subtracted from your annual income and it would reduce your income tax liability.

We have a tax law in place to provide insurance to the economy in case …

By: AndersenWatcher

AndersenWatcher — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:22:39 +0000

$50 at a time, I ended up loaning over $12k within the Prosper playground. Most of the money was loaned out at interest rates north of 10%. Lots of defaults. I conservatively calculate the rate of return at just about 0%. The number of defaults lately has greatly dropped off (because those have already run off with my money, and those left are largely making their payments).

Last summer, I thought this experiment was an unqualified disaster. Now, given that the rest of my portfolio is down 30% TTM, my zero return looks…rosy.

Regards,

By: Larry

Larry — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:43:15 +0000

Loan volume at Lending Club has been growing slowly since they restarted operations. And that’s with significantly reduced competition and an environment that should be quite robust for social lending. Will be interesting to see if/how long it takes for the former market leader to rebound.

By: snarky

snarky — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:32:17 +0000

I’m one of the early adopters of Prosper Lending (started in 2006), and I still think the concept is great, even though they have had their fair share of issues.

I still believe this model can be good for both borrowers and lenders. In the early days of Prosper fraud was a bigger problem, I anticipate that will improve over time.

Good to see the team back in the lending saddle.

By: Beer Universe

Beer Universe — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:14:18 +0000

To a certain extent, I agree. Loaned a few hundred dollars to test the water. Even “A” candidates ran off with the cash – so it makes me think that there aren’t really a whole lot of honest people asking for money.

On the flip side, many were paid off quite quickly. I suppose you need to conduct some due diligence, but its hard on a public website…

By: Prosper Lender

Prosper Lender — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:22:47 +0000

There is nothing “peer-to-peer” about finance-companies dumping their questionable loans (in a rather non-transparent manner” onto regular people.

Prosper, by it’s very nature and systemic impotency cannot become anything but a hotbed of crookedness.

By: TypeForms

TypeForms — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:58:13 +0000

In this economy lending can be much more than someone with money and one without money. How do these guys prevent fraud?

By: Frances Hunter

Frances Hunter — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:25:49 +0000

Crooks and deadbeats – LaraGal has got that one right! One guy I loaned to – claimed to need $25K to fix his truck so he could work. He made ONE payment and disappeared. Probably off to Mexico. Not all are bad but a good number of them just pulled our leg with sad stories, took our money and gone. I hope to just recoup my investment, already lost $1K – no profit.
Suggestion – stay away from Prosper, their collection service is a joke!

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:25:35 +0000

Prosper, Lending Club, and Pertuity Direct all gave great presentations at FinovateStartup yesterday in San Fransisco.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:23:24 +0000

Yes, found it...Zopa closed in October 2008.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:21:22 +0000

They aren’t really up against Zopa. Zopa closed US operations a few months ago. The two p2p lending companies registered with the SEC are Lending Club and Pertuity Direct.

By: LendLocator.com

LendLocator.com — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:15:44 +0000

they should loan out some of that 40 million they’ve been squatting on.

p2person.com – personal matters

By: RJ Martino

RJ Martino — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:39:59 +0000

It looks like they’ve only opened back up to users in CA. Not other states. Maybe they received some type of conditional approval.

By: LaraGal

LaraGal — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:32:55 +0000

Hmmm, how does this work? Do they still need to be quiet under the SEC mandate, but not in California?
Also, I hope this new initiative does not become the second version of Prosper 1.0, which was a hotbed of crooks and deadbeats taking money from lenders and defaulting on them. It seems this second version is a chance for banks to get rid of loans they think will be going bad anyway: good for banks, bad for people.