Profile on Peer to Peer Lending in the Credit Crisis

In the special “Education Life” insert in the Sunday Times today there was an article on alternative ways to find money for college “Loans in the Time of Facebook”. It sounds remarkably appealing, but I’m less familiar with “social” or “Peer to Peer Lending” as it’s called, so I checked out a few of the sites advertised.

Virginmoneyus.com: Manages money between family and friends. If I were so lucky, this would be a great way to authenticate a loan through a third-party site.

Fynanz.com: Peer to Peer lending with a 5% bonus for lenders. You can search by school or state as well so you can see where other students are seeking to borrow.

GreenNote.com: This was the most inspiring of the sites in my opinion. Positioned as receiving a loan from someone who believes in you. Low 6.8% Fixed Rate

Prosper.com: The most established of the PTP lending resources I’ve found with the tagline “Let’s Bank on Each Other.” Similar, personal interst small loans.

It seemed that the fundamental problem highlighted in the article about all of these sites were that there are quite obviously too many interested borrowers and not enough lenders. For me, too, I think it’s just the uncertainty in the market, but I guess I would be a little skittish using these less-established resources… of course, we’ll see how the loan process goes for me, and I may be reinvestigating.