A Prosper Lesson Learned: I'm Kicking Myself For Lending Money To One Person

Read my latest post on prosper here... You can always come back to this 2006 post later.

Bottom Line: I recommend against lending money to people who need to buy a car w/ a Prosper loan.

A car is a "hard asset" that can be repossessed if somebody goes delinquent on payment(s). No matter where you go, you can almost always find somebody willing to sell you a car and finance it too!

To frequently I see people w/o money buying or leasing cars they have no business with (vettes, escalades, lexus's, bmw's, etc). I know there's dealers out there that will finance a car, albeit at a high rate, for most anybody.

So, when somebody with bad credit or no credit wants to borrow money for a car, they've probably been turned down already by dealers. I suspect, their credit and/or income reliability may be much worse than what's represented (or not represented) in their Prosper loan request. Of course, there may be the case where the person may have found a good deal on a private sale, with limited financing opportunities. This is up to you... I've been burned once, and i'm staying away from them.

Ok, why am I saying this. Well, my only delinquency is a person borrowing money for a van. He's also the only "no credit" (NC) rated person that I lent to. He's retired Air Force. I guess I have a soft spot for prior military since i'm active military.

Here's my one delinquent: (Link was listed but removed on recommendation of others).

Summary of my loan portfolio:
a) 89 active loans w/ six more in review for funding
b) 20.32% return since starting in Apr 2006 (% per Prosper Performance Table)
c) One delinquent (six weeks delinquent)

Now, I'm getting to where I prefer "credit card consolidation" loans over all others. I prefer these when the tone of their application is remorseful for the situation they got themselves into, and THEY SPECIFICALLY STATE THEY'RE USING THE LOAN TO PAY OFF OLD DEBT. Of course, they could always lie to you and simply pay off the cards to continue shopping at Nordstroms.... It's one of the risks I choose to take.

Good luck!