mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 3, 2017 3:24:39 GMT
I had the same thing happen to me earlier in the day -- mid-afternoon-ish. It didn't last for more than a couple of minutes before going back to normal. The message I got was... Considering that there seemed to be nothing particular happening on the website at the time, I really didn't think that 'high levels of traffic' were likely -- unless SS were being targeted by a DDoS attack. Meanwhile I look forward to seeing the the results of SS's "working to improve our systems".
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 3, 2017 2:49:16 GMT
Just tuned into the net and seen that 90 days has been added to this one this morning. It's gone from -34 days to +56 days. I think we've just witnessed something unprecedented -- a loan event that has turned out to be better than expected! Last update for this loan: 23/Dec/16 "Expecting funds for a 1-month extension to give the borrower time to refinance with another lender."
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 2, 2017 23:47:22 GMT
Hi all, I just registered on FS - good luck to all investors. This is my first post here, so I might as well show my ignorance from the start :-). If I invest in this, what is the time frame? Is it 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? This seems to be an open-ended loan, or am I missing an obvious end date? micdic: Welcome to the forum! I'm going answer the easy question, and leave the more difficult ones to others. Loan length: Your bafflement is understandable, and it's the result of fundingsecure failing to do on this loan what they do on most of their loans, and that's to put in the General Info for the loan something like "A 6 month loan secured by...". No doubt an oversight on their part. Take a look at the 'How it works' section of the FS 'Investing with us' info. It says there "The loan period is always 6 months. However, ..."HTH
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mikes1531
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FundingSecure (FS) in Administration
Overdue loans
Feb 2, 2017 21:18:21 GMT
Post by mikes1531 on Feb 2, 2017 21:18:21 GMT
I see the "microsculptures loan is being renewed for the same amount as they borrowed previously. At least I assume they have paid the interest.
I assume that the borrower didn't want to use the proceeds from the sale of shares, or was it property they sold to reduce the loan as they stated they would.
Why on earth would anyone believe this borrower and invest in this loan?
I reckon it's one of the better loans on FS. The borrower has already previously paid off nearly half of their original borrowing (which was just over £500k) and continues to pay interest to renew the rest (reasonably promptly, at least by FS standards). And it's 30% LTV against secured assets most people have actually heard of. What more do you want? 09dolphin: The General Info on the maturing loan includes "This loan is currently in the process of being renewed, as the borrower has paid all interest due to date." Do you not believe what FS tell you? If I didn't, I don't think I'd be investing with them. And why did you feel it was necessary to make the assumption you reported? The General Info for the new loan includes "Borrower was expecting to repay the loan through the sale proceeds of a company he owns. The completion date has been set back and he has therefore elected to pay interest and renew the loan.". (Based on that, I'm expecting the renewal loan to be repaid before its maturity, but perhaps I'm being overly optimistic.) As for what these tiny items are 'worth', my initial reaction when they first appeared was that the values given were rather generous, but I trusted the valuer to be reasonably close. I do accept that the price achieved at auction for art all depends on who shows up to bid. I think that's why sellers set reserve prices and why items often don't sell the first time they go to auction. As a related point, a couple of weeks ago I went to a talk given by the engraver who did the micro-portraits of Jane Austen on the new £5 notes that were in the news last month. He knows Willard Wigan because they're both into micro-art. Anyway, he does things like engraving the Lord's prayer on the head of a pin. And he told of the huge prices the gallery he works with can get for his pieces. (By the time the gallery and his agent take their cuts, he gets less than half of the sale price.) Those prices are in the same league as the values placed on the micro-sculptures, so I'm now thinking they might not be as unreasonable as I first thought. Well, maybe they are unreasonable -- but they're not unachievable!
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mikes1531
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FundingSecure (FS) in Administration
Overdue loans
Feb 2, 2017 20:51:33 GMT
Post by mikes1531 on Feb 2, 2017 20:51:33 GMT
Forgot to add that my comment doesn't include my 3 loans that are "unredeemed" where I think it's entirely reasonable for an "update" to be included about every 2 months. Two months is far too long. I'd say a maximum of two weeks is more reasonable.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 2, 2017 18:07:29 GMT
There's also the reality that second charge loans typically incur higher interest rates than first charge loans. It obviously will depend on the actual interest rates and the relative size of the first and second charge loans, but it might be that paying off the cheaper first charge loan could make financial sense. Further investigation suggests that the above isn't an explanation in this case. The existing charges total £510k, so the proposed new loan isn't that much bigger. If the first charges actually were at rates significantly lower than what FS have offered the borrower, then they'd be worth keeping even if obtaining the extra £150k from FS would cost a bit more because it would be a second charge. I expect the first charge holder(s) have to give permission for the borrower to take on any second charges. Perhaps they've told the borrower that they wouldn't allow that. Or perhaps the first charges were short-term loans and the lender(s) won't allow extension. Or perhaps the current lenders are exiting the market and have asked/told the borrower to refinance elsewhere. Or...
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 2, 2017 17:53:13 GMT
Further to the above, the charts have reappeared now.
I didn't make any change so I can't explain what happened.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 2, 2017 4:19:03 GMT
The charts came up fine for me on Wednesday afternoon, but disappeared completely when I did a refresh a few minutes ago. I don't see any blank place holders or any evidence that there are any charts at all. I am supposed to be looking at the OP of this thread, aren't I? I can visit jonah.890m.com/ so it isn't a case of that website being blocked by my ISP. As a temporary workaround, can you supply the URLs of the individual PNG files? With those, I should be able to view them, even if not very elegantly.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 1, 2017 23:36:31 GMT
Can't see any £7.9m Camden Loan...
StrangeEdit - Kentish Town is in Camden. The two separate passages in the e-mail is referring to the same loan I suspected SS were trying to make it look like they had two loans of that size when they really only had one. Now the question is whether they were deliberately trying to mislead their readers or are just incapable of error-free communications.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 1, 2017 22:52:59 GMT
A few little observations... SS have an interesting definition of their 'portfolio'. They may have written £242M of loans, but IMHO they have a £165M portfolio at the moment. I think can identify the first as PBL143, but what is the second? I can't find a second £7.9M loan. I'm surprised they didn't mention the loan that they described elsewhere as being 20x oversubscribed. Maybe we should see if we can produce a truly amazing oversubscription result? The next time SS bring out a small loan or DFL tranche -- one that we can be pretty sure will have a maximum allocation of about £100 -- why don't we all put in a pre-funding request of the maximum we're allowed? IIRC, the smallest maximum PF limit is £10k, so we might to be able to provide SS with a loan that's 100x oversubscribed! That wasn't a really serious suggestion -- it was meant to illustrate how meaningless SS's oversubscription reports are!
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 1, 2017 22:02:21 GMT
Those losses will be felt by the investors and not by saving stream who it feels to me are running a make a fast buck business and their strategy is to placate the masses for as long as possible to rack up more profits for their pockets. The big money to be made in a new venture such as SS doesn't come from profits that can be creamed off before a house of cards collapses. It comes from showing the model to be profitable and scalable and raking in the money from equity investors when the IPO can be organised. For that to work, the house of cards has to stay intact for at least a little while after the IPO. AC are headed in that direction, having raised something like £3M from equity investors, most of whom probably were early adopters as investors via the website. The House Crowd have done something similar. I think they've had three funding rounds so far. And as with AC, much of the money has come from their early adopters.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 1, 2017 21:47:12 GMT
No plane, SS gave me a ride on its blimp. That blimp is going to need a new paint job very soon, when SS rebrand.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 1, 2017 21:44:10 GMT
I thought this would of benn massively over subscribed, I'm a bit gutted I only asked for £100 now. T7 just taken out: £530 awarded Quite surprised, I wasn't expecting it to be anything near that so didn't bother pre-funding! We shouldn't have been surprised by the size of the maximum allocation. It was pretty large as DFL tranches go -- £731k. There are about 3500 investors in this loan, so even if they all had Pre-funded for a large amount the allocation would have been at least £200. But some will already have as much of this loan as they want, so perhaps about 2500 pre-funders is a reasonable expectation. That would mean an average allocation of about £300 and, since some of the PF requests would have been for the £100 minimum amount, a maximum allocation of around £500 seems quite reasonable to me.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 1, 2017 20:14:55 GMT
SS have repeatedly informed me in the past that if a borrower stops sending payment then the loan defaults. The last time I remember them saying that, they had a significant 'get out' clause, something to the effect of "...except if we believe that all interest owed eventually will be received via the recovery process, in which case we'll pay the interest to our investors monthly for a while despite the borrower not paying." (Those are my words, not a quote from SS.) The problem was -- and AFAIK still is -- that it isn't obvious on the website which of the overdue loans are being serviced by the borrowers and which are being serviced by SS. And that's what I thought SS were hoping to make clearer.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Feb 1, 2017 20:03:26 GMT
I thought I read somewhere recently that SS had 'clarified' the position of overdue terms loans... Think about what you are saying! "SS" and "clarified" in the same sentence. I also read something along those lines written by someone other than SS, but I think subsequent posts in the thread led me to the understanding that this had not been implemented. My understanding of what happens in practice is the same as am . But how can anyone know for sure? I wouldn't trust a statement made by SS these days. That's the reason I put 'clarified' in quotes! I take all policy statements from SS with a large dose of salt. I don't accept anything of that nature from them as being real until I see that it has been adopted in practice. On too many occasions, SS have announced that they were going to do something and then subsequently changed their mind without telling anyone. That isn't the way to develop the confidence of their investors, but up to now they don't seem to have been very concerned about that. We can hope that the appointment of a new Communications Officer means they are raising the priority of good communications. But, as before, I'll believe it when I see it producing results.
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