Set your own loan rate at Prosper

Anyone have experiences with this company? Interesting concept but some Google searching shows that they have several unsatisfied customers.

If you want to make any money you gotta invest a lot. Otherwise one default loan can kill your profit.

Secondary funding looks good on paper but seldom makes the rate you want. The customer that they are trying to sell to you can not get customary loans. Some do pay good, but many do not have the attention span to complete the loan. Right now all the secondary home financing that bank thought they were going to make money on are getting foreclosed. Look at the numbers presented and note there is no long time history. Withing 6 months they are having problems with some customers.

I have invested $500 total amongst 10 loans with Propser. My first loan was on 11/16/07, so they are still young. So far, all loans are current and one has paid off. I am not a typical investor though. I work in consumer risk management and am very familiar with credit bureaus and consumer loans. For the average investor, I would not recommend investing in individual loans. You may wish to check out their portfolios however.

Regarding the disgruntled customers, I too saw that and I think that highlights some of the problems with the current business model. People generally aren't familiar with and don't understand consumer lending and they are losing money as a result. Losing money ****es people off. The company is a new company and is censoring some of these ****ed off people, which enrages them further, instead of giving them the tools they need to make money. But that is another whole discussion.

I have lent money to borrowers on prosper and have not had any issues. I tend to lend money to the groups, I think that there is more accountability in those lenders. I also only lend to "A" or higher borrowers. At least then I know that they "could" get a traditional loan, but due to the market conditions, they decided to try prosper.

I tend to look at this as investing small amounts that I'm willing to play around with, as the other option would be to have this money sit in a 2-3% savings account, instead of potentially earning 9% with prosper.

The risk of losing money is higher than investing on the stock market, since you can do nothing if someone just don't want to return your money.

from what I've seen, the people who are mad have only themselves to blame, as they invested in way too many high risk loans. you gotta spread your risk, otherwise you're going to end up like the banks with their subprime loans.

I love Prosper. I feel good about helping other people and making money.

If you haven't done social investing before, Propser is the place to start...great tools and support.

Have about 20 loans through them. 1 defaulted ($50.00). Rest have all paid on time. I agree with the above posting about investing in A rated borrowers or better.

Over 3 years I lost $2700 on My investment of $18,000.