Thanks to everyone who voted the first time to land Uncruch America in the top 10 plans at change.org. There is now a second round of voting at change.org where the top ten plans are in a runoff vote. So you need to go vote for it one more time. Here is the link:

Vote to Uncrunch America

Thanks!

And I promise this will be the last post for a while on voting for P2P lending sites — unless of course Uncrunch or Kiva wins.

There are two great ways that you can support peer to peer lending with a simple mouse click.

1) Vote for Kiva.org — the micro lending site for entrepreneurs in the developing world in the Crunchies which are a major web award. Vote at the 2008 crunchies website under the category of most likely to make the world a better place.

2) Vote for Uncrunch America at Change.org which is being sponsored by Lending Club. Uncrunch America is a newly formed NGO that has been submitted to help change America using the voting system on Change.org. It is based upon the idea that there is lots of money available but hoarded and lots of people in need of money. The top three ideas will be moved to a second round of voting for a runoff election. The the overall top 10 ideas for changing America will be presented to the new administration on Inauguration Day.

About Uncrunch America from Change.org: Read the rest of this entry »

This is off topic of P2P loans, but I have mentioned a few times before the danger of the housing market crisis to your peer-to-peer loan portfolio so I will post this as information to people who are interested in debt markets or the current financial crisis.

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How the conversation occurred
My wife is Russian and we met because I lived in Russia for several years. We often have “Russian parties” where it seems that there are only Russian wives and the American husbands. Although I speak excellent Russian, I am often left to talk with the American husbands, so the ladies can gossip. Usually, I have little in common with the guys other than the Russian spouse so it can be a bit awkward at times. However, sometimes it can be interesting…

Why he started
Recently at one of these occasions, I met a man dating one of my wife’s friends who readily admitted to defaulting on over half a million dollars in mortgages to one of America’s largest banks. He explained that he had a small chain of stores that was running short of cash so he needed cash to fund the shortage. He also worked as a manager in a home construction business so he was familiar with real estate, appraisals, and mortgage financing.

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Since the main business was short on cash, he decided to buy an undervalued house and refinance it at above market value to bring in some cash. (The properties he purchased were undervalued on paper only and not based upon actual condition.) He pulled a list of low value for sale properties Read the rest of this entry »

I planned to blog in commiseration with Tom about being denied for a loan. Tom was denied for a Zopa loan and I was rejected for a GE Money Bank credit card through Amazon. GE Money Bank took 10 days to tell me that they could not verify my identity despite the promise on Amazon.com of a 30 second approval process. I have a 800 credit score and provided all information including a phone number and they could not verify my identity. They did not bother calling to verify and customer service told me the process is computer automated. Ten days for a computer program to return results? I doubt it…

Sorry /Rant Off
I’ll skip the remainder of my planned rant about Amazon’s relationship with GE Money Bank Read the rest of this entry »

For some time now, I have been warning about the mortgage crisis and its impact on P2P loans. The fact that Ed Mcmahon, Johnny Carson’s former sidekick, is in default on his home mortgage shows just how screwed up some Americans were in their thinking about debt, the housing market, and personal finances. Ed Mcmahon went on Larry King live to describe his debt problems.

Fame helps because Donald Trump Read the rest of this entry »

This is part one of a series of what I learned by talking to a mortgage broker last week.

I stopped by my credit union to check into refinancing my mortgage last week. The rates were low and with the likelihood that the fed was going to drop rates again, I decided this might be a good time to refinance from a 30 year fixed to a 15 year fixed interest rate mortgage.

I asked the mortgage broker many questions about the current mortgage market. She passed along some interesting information including the details about Read the rest of this entry »

I heard last year about SUV owners who were upside down in their car loans resorting to arson due to high gasoline prices. Out of desperation, car owners torch (or pay $300 to a professional arsonist for the service) to collect the insurance money. There is a great quote from the article:

At the root of the problem: People pay too much for a vehicle they really can’t afford…

Jennifer Mieth, manager of fire data and public education at the Massachusetts State Fire Marshall’s Office, said car fires are “cyclical.” She added, “When times are good, fires are down. When they are bad they go up.”

…Rowe is not the only one who has seen an increase in SUV fires. Arson investigators in San Diego County saw vehicle arson go up 34 percent between 1998 and 2002, prompting analysts to surmise that more people facing economic hardship may be setting fires to their cars to escape high payments.

The sub prime mortgage crisis has similar roots. Read the rest of this entry »

I mentioned previously that the subprime mortgage crisis should impact your personal loan strategy because of the number of desperate people needing just a little quick cash to prolong a slow fall into bankruptcy and foreclosure on their homes. CnnMoney confers with their article on the number of people taking out Payday loans to pay the mortgage payment. In a small sample, 66% of the people in foreclosure counseling admitted to taking out payday loans to pay their mortgage payment. After fees and other payments, payday loans can reach interest rates of nearly 400% per year.

If anyone is considering lending money to a a home owner Prosper.com or Lending Club, I would ask any borrower who is a homeowner if s/he has an adjustable rate mortgage, and if so, when it will reset and what the new payment will be. There may be someone people who realize that they sitting under a time bomb of a mortgage and are trying to buy more fuse to the foreclosure bomb. The pending bailout is all the more likely to make people try desperate measures to fend off foreclosure since they are now waiting on the federal plan to save them.

Quote from the article on payday loans being used to payoff mortgages in Cleveland, Ohio:

“If you want to see what an unregulated market economy looks like,” said Rokakis, “come to Ohio.” There are now more payday lending shops in the state than McDonalds, Burger Kings and Wendy’s restaurants combined, he noted.

Lenders only require borrowers show pay stubs, checking accounts and references. They don’t credit-check, except to make sure borrowers haven’t defaulted on previous payday loans.

The lenders ask borrowers for post-dated checks for the amount borrowed, plus fees, which average $15 per $100 loan. If the loan goes un-repaid, lenders deposit the checks.

The term is usually two weeks, “Most people believe they’re just going to borrow the one time,” said Faith. Instead, when the two weeks goes by, they often go back to the shop and roll it over for another two weeks. To do that, they pay another $45 in fees…

When the CRL took the average payday loan principal as reported by state regulators and multiplied it by the average number of loan rollovers per year, it found that typical borrowers pay back $793 for a $325 loan.

At those rates, a person with a pending foreclosure Read the rest of this entry »

Stanley Bing at CNN Money blogged about the subprime lending crisis and the falling dollar in his article “Who’s to blame for the credit crisis, the housing slump, the weak dollar, and the fear of recession? It’s a guy named Leonard.”

Yes, Bing, you have me interested. Who the heck is Leonard and why is he responsible? Of course, I am expecting a tongue in check answer from you, but let’s find out… Who is this guy Leonard?

It’s clear this whole subprime mess is much worse than anybody anticipated. Things are crashing. Stuff is burning. The best and brightest minds are at work on how to solve this crisis before it sinks the global economy into a hopeless morass that will plague us all for decades. No, wait. They’re the ones who caused it… I believe it is our duty… to pinpoint blame.

Bing goes on to “interview” the former head of a bank, an investment bank board member and a quant who all send him on the search for Leonard Flanken. Bing happens by Flanken Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been reading my recent posts at Personal Loan Portfolio, you know that I am in the process of formating a P2P lending strategy. However, lending does not seem to be a good business to be in recently. Countrywide, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, is hemorrhaging jobs and money due to poor lending practices. Countrywide is not alone — see the recent financial results at Morgan Stanley , Citibank, and Merrill Lynch which have all been negatively impacted by their mortgage backed securities investments. These recent results make for a frightening lending environment.

Today, MSNBC is reporting that mortgage foreclosures rose 30% in the third quarter of 2007 over the second quarter. The level is double the third quarter 2006. That makes the overall US foreclosure rate one out of every 196 households. How does this rise in foreclosures impact your Prosper lending strategy?

First, why the increase in foreclosures? Too many borrowers bought more house than they could afford by taking out an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). ARMs give the borrower a lower introductory mortgage rate on the assumption that the borrower will 1) sell the house before the rate adjusts upwards or not long after the rate change, 2) the borrower will earn more money in the future and thus be able to take on the additional payment or 3) refinance at a lower rate or under better terms in the future. Too often, I believe that the reason that borrowers took on ARMs was that they simply did not understand the interest change.

An upward rate adjustment of only 2% could add over $600 per month on a $500K mortgage payment[1] — but the story is even worse if the borrower had received a special introductory rate. Add to the picture rising gasoline prices, rising home owner’s insurance rates, and inflation. This makes the foreclosure rate very understandable in the markets that had high price home appreciation, especially considering that many people can no longer sell their house at a profit in the slow moving and declining market. According to BankRate.com, a borrower has a 1 in 3 chance of losing their home if they took out an ARM and had an initial interest rate of less than 4%. Unfortunately, foreclosure even impacts those who borrowed wisely according to the Center for Responsible Lending:

The center’s property value analysis was based on academic research indicating that a foreclosure lowers the price of neighboring properties by 0.9 percent on average. That impact was higher in poor neighborhoods, where prices dropped 1.4 percent on average.

So how does this effect a Prosper or other P2P lending strategy? Read the rest of this entry »