Does anyone bother to ask questions anymore?

[gamassey]

I have tried to ask the applicant questions a few times and the loan is always funded before I ever get an answer back.  So I was wondering if anyone even tries to ask questions anymore?  It seems like a complete waste of time now.

Allen

[core]

It's worse than a waste of time -- asking one of those prefab questions eats up precious seconds.  There's not a chance of it being useful if you're actually going to wait until the borrower bothers to respond.  If you do get one where they answer and it's still not funded, odds are it's a bad loan that nobody else wants.  It's really too bad that asking questions doesn't happen anymore, because even well after the loan is funded I find reading the old information useful at times.

[WES]

Yes, core is right. There's barely time to read the employer data, and I've been skipping borrower comments, as well.

[New Jersey Guy]

Wondering about that myself, so I took a look at the notes I bought yesterday and are pending settlement (Folio purchases)

I bought 9 "Fresh" issues.
Only 1 has a question.

I bought 11 "Older" notes.
9 have questions.

20 notes really doesn't prove anything.  But because I purchase off of Folio, I don't have to "Beat the Clock".  Rather, I handpick.  I can tell you that I look at many notes.  I will say that not only do they have no questions posted, most don't bother to have a description, either.  The ones that do are nothing more than "Debt Consolidation", or "Looking for lower APR", or some other insignificant one-liner.

"If you do get one where they answer and it's still not funded, odds are it's a bad loan that nobody else wants."

It appears that all the fresh notes I get off of Folio were funded the old fashioned way.  120 investors, 160 investors, etc.  Apparently these are all notes that weren't sucked up in 4 seconds on LC.  I don't find those on Folio.

I don't agree 100% that these were "bad loans that nobody else wants". 
I guess it just depends on what your opinion of a "Bad" note is. 
I'm more aggressive when purchasing Buy/Hold notes, so what looks like a good note to me may look bad to you. (I'm 82% vested in C-D-E Notes)

Here are a couple of examples.  I liked them, but you can pick them apart if you want.
https://www.lendingclub.com/foliofn/loanPerf.action?loan_id=6529471&order_id=9869677&note_id=28073855" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">https://www.lendingclub.com/foliofn/loanPerf.action?loan_id=6529471&order_id=9869677&note_id=28073855
https://www.lendingclub.com/foliofn/loanPerf.action?loan_id=6528034&order_id=9867108&note_id=27967514" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">https://www.lendingclub.com/foliofn/loanPerf.action?loan_id=6528034&order_id=9867108&note_id=27967514

I don't have enough money invested in LC that I have to worry about funding 10, 40, 50 or 100 loans a day.  I agree that if you have $5,000 sitting idle, that not getting your money invested in an acceptable amount of time could be very, very frustrating.  I remember how long it took Rawraw to get his $6000 invested, but he did it.

What I don't agree with is all the complaining about it. There are several other avenues investors can take to get money working.  "Buy/Hold" notes are just 1 of 3 different strategies I use.  Having 2 other strategies opens up other buying opportunities for me. 

Look at Core's returns.  Clearly, he's doing something other than just buying fresh "Buy/Hold" notes on Lending Club.

Opportunities exist.
People just don't want to be bothered exploring them.
It's easier to complain or quit.

[cfb]

I used to, but its not really plausible anymore due to the short fill times.

However, I found that when I asked questions, the answers either didn't answer the question or made me not want to invest.  Seems the more a borrower says, the less I want to give them my money.  An inapplicable answer all in caps with spelling errors doesn't exactly inspire.  So I decided that if I wanted to ask a question, that meant the note didn't look right.

[TravelingPennies]

https://forum.lendacademy.com/index.php?topic=1468.msg11098#msg88888888Quote"> from: cfb on August 22, 2013, 07:24:18 PM

[rawraw]

Yea, at the end of the day I'm not sure how much it matters.  The whole point of LC is managing homogeneous credit anyway -- I spend more time avoiding any avoidable systemic problems of my portfolio (having a concentration in one state, for example).