Let's talk about peer-to-peer lending!!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Let's talk about peer-to-peer lending!!

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

Saint Fu posted:

I think a lot of the institutional investors just run filters without reading the comments. It seems like monthly income is the most important stat for them despite not being verified. It's pretty common to find $35,000 loans funded to 80% with less than 10 lenders when the income is over $10k/mo.

I didn't look at the descriptions much beyond my filters because people can say anything they want. If you filter out the people with public records, delinquincies, super high DTI etc, I don't care why they want the money.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2013 16:07

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 04:33

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

Saint Fu posted:

I agree and basically do the same. I used to read the comments and if they were well written and seemed somewhat intelligent then I'd favor them over AOL speak. I guess I still do if I take the time to actually read the comments but more often than not I trust the filters.

On the other hand, I just had my second default and looking back on the comments they were completely retarded and I definitely shouldn't have invested.

The title is like the last filter for me. Once I've applied my normal filter and have a smaller subset, I will definitely avoid people who can't put together even the title and yet want 35k.

# ¿ May 1, 2013 15:56

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

Dr. Eldarion posted:

With stocks looking expensive, this seemed like an attractive place to invest so I opened up a LendingClub account last night.

So far, I've only invested ~1/5th of the money I've put in, just because there weren't enough available loans to meet my standards. How often do more come in? I noticed some new ones this morning, so it can't be that infrequently, but are they processed daily in batch? Real-time? Anyone know?

It's like 4 times a day, I believe their website lists the times. The largest batch I guess is at 6 AM PST.

# ¿ May 8, 2013 21:27

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

I have some money on Lending Club now, and I'm picking out a few notes. Am I right in finding that the biggest thing I'm looking for so far is lies? Because I am seeing some whoppers.

30k in "moving expenses"
Claims of making $20k+/mo
Claims of having almost no monthly expenses despite a huge amount of debt
Debt consolidation amounts that have nothing to do with the revolving debt

I'm basically just playing bullshit detector, no?

I would suggest creating a filter and then operating off of that primarily. Also keep in mind that a large percentage of the notes I invest in, end up not being funded even after I've filtered out clearly terrible people.

My filter is something like:

36 month loans only
0 delinquencies in last 2 years
25% max dti
Exclude loans with public records
60% revolving balance utilization.

It's way too soon for me to say that this is a great filter, but I wanted to skim off the clearly bad with money people.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2013 14:27

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

Inverse Icarus posted:

Thinking about giving this a whirl with a few grand, I've been browsing notes while waiting for my bank account to verify.

I read the whole thread last night, and one of the things that was repeated a few times is that you can get some sort of read on the borrower by seeing how well they write their responses, but it seems like a lot of the notes I was browsing were almost ready to go without answering a single question.

Did I just check at a weird time, or am I missing something?

You aren't missing anything, there is no time on either side to ask or answer questions and I don't think it really matters because if someone is talking their way into borrowing 35k, then they will just say what they need to.

What I do is, I have my filter setup, and at the loan load times (6, 10, 2, 6 pacific), I just blanket give out loans to the highest interest rate people that fall into it. Rarely the title of the loan will cause me to pass giving out 25$ but it's pretty rare that I even look at the title.

This morning I did see a title that said "A hope to live a better life", and I thought, that person is going to default for sure. I still invested though, because it met one of my filters, in this case it was a high interest, low dollar amount loan (F for 1000$).

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 14:24

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

Saint Fu posted:

My unscientific guess based on experience is that about one third to one half of the notes I order don't end up going through. I would guess that the rejection rate gets higher with higher rate loans since these borrowers are even less likely to meet LC's underwriting criteria.

Yeah, a tremendous amount of funded loans don't get issued, easily 50%+ and that's for things in the B/C range which is where I tend to invest. It's not a huge deal if you are trying to invest a ton of money because your real bottleneck will be getting that money even into the in funding status. You're lucky if you find a half dozen good notes even if you hawk over the time they get issued.

The last few hundred dollars you invest will take you forever to get issued.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 22:07

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

Inverse Icarus posted:

How long is the money tied up in those rejected notes, on average?

I would say maybe 5-7 days, perhaps more in some cases. I don't know that there is a way to see loans that you invested in, that didn't get issued. It's annoying but I'd rather loans get checked out again before being issued than to end up with a default.

Peer to peer is a lot of work, even if you just experiment with 150$ you'll see that and it may not seem worth it, and for some people it isn't, but I enjoy the control I have, even if it is a lot of work.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 02:21

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

April posted:

That IS cool, where is it?

On the main page there is on the right sidebar a link talking about new features. It's pretty hidden and it isn't clear.

In my case my notes are not old enough to pinpoint (or to have confidence in what it showed).

# ¿ Dec 11, 2013 22:39

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 04:33

Dazzleberries: Jul 4, 2003

April posted:

Update time!

As of right now, my notes look like this:

As you can see, my number of charge-offs has risen quite a bit. They are almost all notes that were issued around the time I started this thread, when I was trying to get large-ish chunks of money invested as quickly as possible. During that time, I bought notes that were riskier just for the sake of not letting my money sit for a few extra days. Yes, I was stupid. Most of the ones that have defaulted over the last few months have paid $6-7, so they weren't a total loss. Still an expensive lesson to learn about being too eager to invest.

On the plus side, payments look like this:

To date, I have put in $16,950. I have received payments for over half of that amount, and still have outstanding principal of $18,590.

Overall, I'm still VERY enthusiastic about this. My portfolio is generating just over $750/month, so I'm able to grow it by 30 notes a month, even if I don't add any more funds to the account.

Is anyone else starting to see the compounding really kicking in? I have 927 open notes, and I've only paid for 678.

What is your average age on your notes? I think it's interesting to see how many of your loans have been fully paid off although if I extrapolate out to a year I may be in the same boat. I have around 850 current notes, with 26 paid off but my average age of a note just crossed 3 months.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2014 20:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Let's talk about peer-to-peer lending!!