BiggerPockets

Not in my opinion. Just try to 'login' after you sign up. Once you set up your lender profile, their site doesn't allow you to do anything. See my July 4 post. Same as now.

As per my July 7 post, I get everything in the US under $250,000. Most posts are for owner occupied, many are 'refis', many are on money360 because they won't qualify anywhere else. Every once in a while, I see something interesting. But not enough to "buy" the lead. See also my July 8 post about what they should put in their system. I can't filter posts, etc., so for the moment this system is for entertainment. The last deal I funded (9/6/2012) was local. Money360 isn't currently a platform that will entice me to change my investing.

Good idea, but there is one way to make it better perhaps. Borrower pays to list; lender re-pays the borrower the amount of the listing expense once they agree on loan terms, or maybe upon completion of final payment (by reducing final payment even).

Sorry about that, when I inspected the unit it had some plumbing and electrical issues and some leins that needed to be brought current. That killed the deal.

I took a break from active investing to enjoy my daughter's first year with us. Now that she's turning 1 this year, its time to get back out there.

Money360 and Prosper (LendingClub) are really different animals. Regarding your 3 month test... a few months isn't long enough to comare true return.

I was a lender many years before the SEC shut these sites down. Before the "re-launch", default rates were a lot worse. I still get a laugh out of some of the atrocious statistics as presented by prosper in their SEC filings. For instance, the graph on page 18 of the year end 2011 (latest 10-K available). The graph shows 31-120 day delinquency rates for loans originated prior to July 13, 2009 by quarter, as of 12/31/2011, was 75%.

Indeed LendingClub is now way bigger than Prosper by lending volume. See also http://lendstats.com/ for to-the-dollar statistics based on SEC filings. Tons of interesting stuff there... like the return for one lender who has lent $36,662,274...

I have used Prosper and LendingClub for loans to buy single-family homes because I have been frustrated that no bank will seem to lend to me even though I have excellent credit (775), long-term employment (15 years) and almost $1m in assets. All because of the "4 mortgage" limit.

However, the loans are short term (3 years) and I have no issues paying them off because the rental income covers the payment. They have been great for me in that respect however I have seen that my credit score, which used to be over 800, took a hit each time I took on one of their loans (have 3 loans for 3 single family homes).

The first Lending Club loan was in January 2012 and took just a week or so to close. They take their "closing cost" out of the proceeds of the loan, so there is no money down. I used those funds to buy a single-family home that was a bank foreclosure. The property sold for $24,900 on 2/29 and I borrowed $21,000. The remaining funds for the purchase and rehab were from my own funds. I showed that property on 3/10 and had a renter in as of 3/15. Rent is $800/month for a 2bd 1ba home.

The second one was from Prosper and I received $18,000 -- this was in November 2012. I used this to buy a $23,000 single-family home (3bd 1ba) from a seller who just wanted out. There was little wrong with the property ($1500 in repairs, literally) and already had tenants. $875/month. Closing on that was 11/27 and I started collecting rent the next month. Tenants have been great and payments are like clockwork so far.

The third one was for $30,000 from Lending Club. I used that to buy a 4bd 2ba single-family from a bank (closing was 12/14), price was $24,000. I used the remainder money plus my own funds to fix up the place. This one required about $15K in rehab (most of that was a new roof). Renovation is still in progress, but close enough to being done where I had showings yesterday and took applications for renting it out March 1st for $1100/month.

All 3 loans were over 7% interest rate, which is high when compared to traditional mortgages. But they were only 3 year loans so the total amount of interest is really not too much.

The most important thing is that it allowed me to get these properties which will give me income month after month. My vacancy rate is extremely low and over all the time I have been renting out properties, I have never had to evict and the longest a property has sat vacant was 3 weeks. I believe providing high quality rentals and proper screening is the key to getting good tenants.

It's gotten to the point where I have had multiple people email/call me wanting me to buy their properties, and it's hard to pass up on some of these deals, but funding is the main issue. As a result, it looks like I will have to take a break from investing for a while.

@Dawn A. Just curious. Do these loans have a balloon after 3 years, or are there high payments that pay them off over the three years?

You said the interest rate is higher than 7%. How much higher? I have some private loans that I'm paying 7% on. It's not bad considering the amount of fees and interest that hard money lenders charge.

Yup, you are right. It's kind of interesting that on an "update" it seems that the URL notation doesn't seem to be recognized. Don't know about bold and other pseudo-HTML...

@Dawn A. Thanks for sharing that info. I may just try to that.

@Jon Klaus Thanks for posting the link to this discussion in another thread and brining my attention back here. Super cool.

Mike H. I can't agree with you more. See my July 4, 2012 post. My original post was 18 months ago and the functionality, user experience, and format has not improved. This site is a dud.

As I said in October, 2012, "Money360 isn't currently a platform that will entice me to change my investing." If you google "money360", the second match is this BP thread. The first is their homepage. The other articles are either old or the authors clearly didn't use the site.

Too bad, because I think they had a lot of potential.