Entries Tagged 'Groups' ↓
June 18th, 2008 — Groups, Listing Review, Prosper.com
My Prosper Group is proud to present our 3rd listing (2nd endorsed listing)… This listing is attempting to put the social in social capital.
The Penny Saved has been a known blogroll buddy of RateLadder for sometime. He asked me about this loan strategy about 2 months ago. This is a calculated decision on his part.
He is a computer programmer, owns a rental property, and independently runs the personal finance blog The Penney Saved.
The loan will be used to raise his credit score so that he and his fiance can build a house… Reducing his revolving credit card debt by transferring the revolving debt to an installment loan will improve his credit score. Specifically, it will reduce his high revolving debt balance percentage (79% in the Prosper listing.)
His listing does a great job of laying out the financial reasoning behind the loan…
Unfortunately for him his inquires in the last 6 months are 3. This places him in an very unfavorable loan slice… This does not affect my belief that The Penny Saved will repay this debt.
I will be bid $105.66 @ 1% (all available cash at the moment… I will add another bid at the end of the listing with all additional funds available at the time.)
Here is what prosper says about that slice…
Minimum bid rate (chosen by borrower): 16.00%
Estimated loss1: -16.49%
Adjustment2: -1.26%
Servicing fee: -1.00%
Estimated return3: -2.75%
Here is the listing.
$25 Bonus For New Lenders
How to Use Prosper Listing Widget for MySpace, Blog, Website, or Other
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May 2nd, 2008 — Groups, Listing Review, Prosper.com, Strategy, Tools
Any regular reader will know that last week I brought my first group listing to the marketplace. (As an aside, a group leader is no longer paid for successful listings and the haven’t been since September 13, 2007: Email To Group Leaders After Recent Changes. I think this was a good change and said so at the time and continue to say so now.)
While I certainly helped to the best of my ability and resources, the borrower did an excellent job of leveraging his social capital…
What social capital?
- He made it know that he had a job that supplemented his income. For him that amounted to as much as an extra $900 a month. By putting his blog on the listing he was not only putting his anonymous credit information and verifiable income on display, but leveraging his online assets. By adding the reputation of his blog to the listing, I think he added to the quality of listing immeasurably. Any blogger with any significant track record that puts their blog reputation at risk is serious about the reasons behind the loan and paying off the loan. (His blog is Deep Market.)
- He leveraged his interactions with me — a long time lender and p2p blogger. By joining my group and becoming Prosper friends and accepting my endorsement on his listing he was able leverage his interactions with me (email and blog comments for around a year) into additional social capital: my endorsement.
- Additionally, he used his blog to advertise his listing: Prosper Loan Listing Review. By offering links and reviews in exchange for bids and reviews he was offering a non monetary but valuable asset in exchange for buzz and bids.
What was the net result? A $25,000 loan at an interest rate he is very happy with 18.5%… His loan was bid down almost 7% from his starting point of 25.45%.
Deep Market, Congratulations and good luck… please keep us up to date with your progress.
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March 28th, 2008 — Groups, News, Prosper.com
Back in January we told you how Travler505 had brought it to Prosper’s attention that Prosper was not operating according to the lender and group leader agreements (Prosper Honors Agreements And Pays Interest)…
Yesterday, they finished the work and released the last of the refunds: Completion of Refunds to Lenders and Group Leaders.
The release of funds yesterday was the first impact on my account… It was not a very large impact, but I did recieve some additional funds from these refunds. How much did I receive?
Well I had 3 loans that were affected by the refunds.
#1: refund $0.01295 plus interest $0.000495
#2: refund $0.05222 plus interest $0.001875
#3: refund $0.02096 plus interest $0.000933
For a grand total of refund plus interest of $0.089433
I would imagine that some of the Group Leaders received far more.
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October 16th, 2007 — Groups, Prosper.com, Statistics
On a thread in the forum it was revealed for the first time that I am aware of that the earliest pre launch special invite group leaders were compensated with stock (see here).
I used ProProsper to identify these groups. I am unsure of the exact cutoff date so I am publishing all groups started on or before 2/16/2006. Some of these groups have a GL that is a known employee (jwitchel for example); regardless I left the list intact. I obtained this list by using data freely available in the public data export through. Specifically I used the grid export to csv file of ProProsper after ordering the group grid by the “Group Since” column.
(This spreadsheet is also available here)
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July 1st, 2007 — Groups, Listing Review, Prosper.com
$25 Bonus For New Lenders
How to Use Prosper Listing Widget for MySpace, Blog, Website, or Other
When I wrote the post yesterday I didn’t have funds available for bidding. I rectified that using the the rapid transfer feature. I have now placed bids of $71.87 @ 23% and $50.00 @ 19.94%.
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June 30th, 2007 — Groups, Loan Review, Prosper.com
Here is a current listing from EveryDay People. This listing has an excellent chance of funding. In addition, Everyday People’s Group Leader StaciM has also endorsed AND BID on the listing. (Personally I think an endorsement without a bid is meaningless… kudos StaciM). The reason StaciM can bid with confidence is that she really gets to know the people in her group — she independently verifies many of the facts in the individuals story.
The only thing I would have done differently is to put a higher starting rate. In the case of D, E, and HR I believe in starting at the maximum (in this case 24% — state cap and GL fee) and allowing the market to fully fund and then bid down a quality listing. That being said the 23% is not out of line with the marketplace. (Edit: StaciM has informed me that, “he is at the max rate, less the GL reward. Remember Prosper always holds back 1%”… in which case I think this listing is very well done indeed.)
This is about as clean a D as you will find and the reason for the credit score is clearly laid out in the listing and verified by the GL. What more could you want?
$25 Bonus For New Lenders
How to Use Prosper Listing Widget for MySpace, Blog, Website, or Other
Here is the Description…
Purpose of loan:
I would like to pay off all my high interest credit card debt. In this case it is all the debt I have.
My financial situation:
I currently gross 53,503.00 a year. Monthly is 4458.58. About 5 1/2 year ago I got out of the military and fought for 2 years trying to keep up with all my payments but was unsuccessful considering I was not making what I made in the military and had to file for bankruptcy. The last 3 1/2 years (since the bankruptcy) I have never been late on any payments and have had perfect credit since. Unfortunately the bankruptcy is keeping my credit score down in the low 600’s which is why I’m rated as a D on this site. I am a safe bet with a great interest rate for you investors.
I recently divorced and would like to consolidate all my bills into one payment and to save some money from the credit card interest rates. My current debt is from a home remodel which upon selling they were going to get paid off but the home did not sell for what was expected and it had to sell quickly. I am not one to just run up credit cards because I want a new toy. I am very careful with my money, I just made a bad call on an investment. I currently make plenty of money for this loan and my other payments listed below. My debt to income ratio is a little high do to the other auto loan my ex-wife and I have. She has this vehicle and it is written in the divorce decree that she is responsible for this loan and it’s debt. She has already been removed from all other accounts with my name on it.
Although I just started my current job a couple of months ago I have been in the same field of work for 7 years and love what I do. I have had a great professional relationship with my current jobs CEO and executives for the last 3 years which is why they asked me to come join their team. My job is very stable and I don’t plan on going anywhere. Thanks again for your time.
Monthly net income: $
3,300.00
Monthly expenses: $
Housing: $ 905.00
Insurance: $ 135.00
Car expenses: $ 769.00 Gas 200.00
Utilities: $ 120.00
Phone, cable, internet: $ 99.00
Food, entertainment: $ 200.00
Clothing, household expenses $ 50.00
Credit cards and other loans: $ 386.00 monthly, total 9375.00 This will be paid off with this loan.
Other expenses: $
Here is StaciM endorsement… and did I mention she bid on the lisitng as well:
I’ve verified income, rental amount, and car payment. DTI high in part for consolidation, but also due to vehicle that is his former spouse’s responsibility.
Here is another random listing from EveryDay People.
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June 6th, 2007 — Groups, Prosper.com
As any serious Prosper lender will tell you, Groups don’t make make much sense for lenders. What is the benefit? Sure I have a group and sure my group (all lenders) get benefits (such as early looks at analysis I am working on), but in general why would a lender want to be a member of a group? Why would a lender want to receive less interest when the borrower pays a GL payment reward? And to top it all off, most Group Leaders (myself included) were poaching existing members. So Prosper paid to acquire the members and then paid again when a GL poached a borrower and got there loan funded…
Borrower’s let my give you some free advice. If you want to get your listing funded click here, join Prosper, and make a listing following my suggestions. The key to getting funded is to tell you story and income and expenses, use a picture/url, and use a VERY competitive starting interest rate (high).
BUT THE BEST PART of the referral program is the $25 New Lender Bonus.
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June 3rd, 2007 — Groups, Prosper.com, Tools
I have sent members of my group the entire underlying spreadsheet to the upcoming 1 month late curves this include the Markov Chains that can when complete be used to solve for expected value by credit grade for all Prosper loans.
Interested in obtaining the spreadsheet for yourself? Join my group: https://www.prosper.com/groups/group_home.aspx?group_short_name=RateLadder
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May 31st, 2007 — Groups, Prosper.com
Prosper Group RateLadder.
I would to thank the members of my group for their support… As I could have guessed most of my readers and friends are lenders… The Prosper group is now 12 strong…
I correspond with many of them regularly. I have gotten a lot of ideas for this blog, ProProsper, and Prosper in general from my core group of readers.
To me a Prosper Group is fundamentally about getting listings funded. To that end a strong lender core is key, but the very first requirement is that you have listings to get funded. If the Lister was able to get funded on there own they would do it without a group. A group can provide a borrower with a mentor and helping hand through the process.
Anybody out there interested in a obtaining a loan from Prosper? If you are you might consider joining my group. We are dedicated to helping borrowers climb down the rateladder. If you would like an invitation to join my group and/or Prosper please send an email to kevin (at) proprosper [dot] com.
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March 30th, 2007 — Groups, Prosper.com
This post is attempting to report fact and not make any judgments. If my rational readers have any comments I would love to hear them…
Today my 2 millionaires forum thread (and many other 2 Millionaires threads) were locked (no new posts allowed.) My guess is this was done because due to complaints by 2 millionaires. I tried to have nonincendiary open dialogue. But both sides are very very quick to flame… There are reports of 10 or more people being banned from the forum. I have not been banned.
Here is what Prosper Brian said when locking the thread:
All,
This thread has been locked because it violates the forum policies of “Baiting other members into a fight or displaying other aggressive behavior” and “Being mean-spirited, unruly, or rude.”
Brian
Here is a link to the thread: http://forums.prosper.com/index.php?showtopic=22124
This thread talks about banned members: http://forums.prosper.com/index.php?showtopic=22451. Here is the email they recieved:
You have been suspended from the Prosper forum for violating the following forum policies:
Baiting other members into a fight or displaying other aggressive behavior.
Being mean-spirited, unruly, or rude.
Encouraging others to violate the Prosper Policies, the Prosper Terms of Use or any Prosper legal agreements.
Brian
Also, in response this thread was started calling for reporting 2 millionaires: http://forums.prosper.com/index.php?showtopic=22468
And I have decided to copy the text in case the thread is removed…
Dear Prosper Community:
As you know, 10 members have been banned from the forums for 5 days. We are receiving phone calls from Prosper Shira and Brian to explain what is going on.
During my conversation with Shira, it was relayed that in order to have Prosper.com look into a group, we need to use the “report” button that is on every page of prosper.com.
So, I urge everyone to use that function now in reporting these two groups:
TWO MILLIONAIRES have been where you are - will help! Grp 1
TWO MILLIONAIRES have been where you are - will help! Grp 2
The report button is at the bottom of the page. When you report them, you should chose the “Other, please explain below” option.
In there, please explain why you are reporting them. You may wish to use this if you wish:
Prosper Marketplace,
I am reporting this group due to their deceptive business practices. This group is manipulating the star system through community payments. As a result, the group continues to push through (by brute force) massive number of loans by virtue of their 5 star status. The group process is supposed to FILTER OUT bad loans, not FILTER IN bad loans. Unfortunately, this is what is occurring.
Purposely using community payments to keep their 5 star rating is deceptive to the marketplace those stars were created to aide. The stars are meant to reflect the payment history of the group’s borrowers; to indicate to lenders that a group is less or more of a risk based repayment compared historical Experian performance. By making community payments for non-paying members WITH THE SOLE INTENTION OF KEEPING THEIR STARS, the group leader of this group is falsifying the one metric made available to lenders to analytically judge a group. This creates a dangerous situation where lenders will bid based not only borrower’s listing but also on the rating of the group. By fraudulently maintaining a 5 star rating, this group is creating a ponzi-scheme like scenario where the first people in get paid off and tell their friends how great it is. It keeps building and building until it becomes unsustainable, where then the top of the pyramid leaves with the funds and the investors are left holding the bag.
While this group is not violating the letter of the TOS, surely they are violating the spirit of the TOS via the community payment method. I am asking for this group to immediately be suspended from making community payments until the time the star rating mechanism can be changed so that it is not influenced by community payments.
Sincerely,
Please add, remove or edit any part you want. If you have a better or more eloquent way of putting something, please let me know and I’ll update my letter.
Please, if you want this madness to stop, this is the way prosper has communicated that it should done.
ETA: Some suggestions from below.
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