New Loans on LendingCrowd-STAFF ONLY

I was going to ask the same thing - 21 days is a very long time for money to be sitting in an auction.  7 days should be more than enough, IMO.

This thread is a very good idea, though. Thanks.

I completely agree, unlikely to bid on a loan more than a day or two in advance.

On a related point, was the V**** I****** Ltd extended by 3 days this morning? I thought I'd mentally logged it as ending today, yet it now shows 3 days left and I can find nothing on the listing to say whether it's been extended. If it has, it would be good to send out an email to bidders to let them know (as a courtesy)

I would agree with the comments above. Now that we have a new influx of lenders who are accustomed to last minute bidding I would support a reduced bidding period and an extension where the loan has not been filled.

Sadly I have been outbid on a few recent loans which previously has been a rare occurrence. But I'll live with it. However, I do wonder whether the large bids at the lowest interest levels in a certain recently closed loan were a deliberate means of reducing the final interest rate to the borrower

Perhaps they were bid by the borrower's mother 

I don't like extensions its a bit like watching paint dry  or flogging a dead horse in the hope that  some dim punters will come along and resurrect it .  ReBs have extended a loan twice now C**** R*** A********* and still not filled after 17 days.

A loan not filling  should say something important to the platform about their choices or the borrower about how lenders see them.  Instead it seems to get put down to not enough lenders or time.

Don't think "the borrower wanted to give it a little more time to see if it will fill." cuts it, maybe the loan needs a lower rating and value.

Actually you can't be certain it wouldn't have filled in the original time allotted, since it was extended with several hours still to go (and over 90% filled). I, for one, would have bid again had the rates stayed at a decent level as it approached closure. Perhaps others would too. Now I'll sit on my money until Monday comes.

Extending loans when a loan is slow to fill is one of the main reasons why ReBS is going nowhere. Unless LC takes a different approach that encourages lenders to bid early (and doesn't penalise them for doing so) then you face having the very same outcome. My thinking is that no auction should need to run longer than 7-10 days; if the lender base haven't heard about a new loan by then, that is a communications failure not a lending issue. Likewise, unless a loan is a lot bigger than loans that have filled previously, no loan should have problems filling within 7-10 days; if a new loan won't fill in that time then the chances are that it is unattractive versus other opportunities available (on LC and elsewhere). Either the rate has been misjudged versus the risk, the information provided is inadequate or the responses to questions have been off-putting.

So how to deal with a loan that hasn't filled after its initial 7-10 days, without annoying the very lenders you're trying to encourage to bid (on this loan and those to come)? I suggest there are 2 options:

a) If it's tracking a long way off filling, either accept this fact (at whatever stage it becomes obvious) and cancel the auction to release money to lenders so they can bid on something more worthwhile, or (as FC sometimes do) improve the terms mid-auction by adding cashback or some other incentive

or

b) If it's close to filling (as VI Ltd was), extend the auction by a day or two but ACCEPT / LOCK-IN all the bids already made at the point the initial auction period finished. That way, late bidders are only bidding for the unfilled portion of the loan and may end up with a lower rate than some of those that bid early, rather than the other way around.

Nothing winds me up more than having my cash locked up in an auction for a couple of weeks, then seeing it extended (and possibly extended again), only for the "clever money" to arrive just a couple of minutes before the loan is finally going to heave itself over the line and knocking out my bids. Those that commit to a loan early should be advantaged over those that game the system by holding off bidding until it's already 100% filled, not the other way around.