Friday, June 16, 2006

My Telephone Call with Prosper

As far as I can tell, the buzz going around is that Prosper calls to verify borrowers AFTER their loan has closed. That can sometimes tie up a borrower's funds a few days or even weeks. But maybe a shift is occuring.

A woman from Prosper called me today to verify my telephone number and to verify that I posted a listing on Prosper. She basically told me that they will not be asking for my paystubs and my loan will be funded to my bank account on Tuesday.

I took the opportunity to ask her about the income at Prosper since one of the things I was battling with was the fact that I listed household income. I was concerned that lenders that already bid on my loan may be upset once they found out what I calculate my total household debt to income ratio to be. This month it's 45% but Prosper doesn't include mortgage debt so that reduces our ratio to 34%. Even though I give out a lot of information about myself on my blog, I don't want to feel like I tricked people into bidding on my loan by doing something wrong (hense the reason why I thought of relisting).

What she said is that Prosper is set up to do individual income but they accept household income. A borrower must then provide paystubs for themselves as well as their spouse if their information is chosen to be verified. I mentioned that the debt to income ratio would then be incorrect and she agreed with me. I think this is an area that Prosper needs to fine-tune.

After that call and receiving a few emails, I have smile on my face again. It disappeared for a little bit, but it's back. :)

Index of My Borrowing Experience with Prosper

2 comments:

kassy said...

I'm glad you're getting your smile back, it can be a pain getting used to doing something new. I switched banks recently and getting used to how the new bank works vs my old one was pretty frustrating, at one point I almost switched back. Anyway, I'm following your Prosper experiences with interest because I'm thinking of encouraging my bf to use it to pay off his credit card.

BAD said...

Thanks Kassy. While I don't mind trying new things - it sure is hard to do. Especially trying Prosper because it is so new.

I think though it has the potential to help out a lot of people. I will still be following it to watch how Propser evolves.