In response to mothandrust and cardinalflyer’s comments:
There is a “rule of thumb” in debt buying that you know you didn’t pay too much for a portfolio if you receive back you purchase price in the first year. In the case of the accounts that comprised the “cancelled” debt sale bid file, they have already collected more than 2/3 of the total amount of the best bid. We remain confident that NOT selling the file was/is in the best interests of the lenders.
I am having a very hard time believeing that this is anything but a complete fabrication. IIRC, the JDB offer was for about $200K. Two thirds of that would be $167K. Have we seen ANY indication at all that Prosper has collected anywhere even remotely close to $167K from 4+month lates in the last 4.5 months? Fred93, you keep an eye on collections -- do you have any data on this?
I have only 1 source, which is the Prosper collection agency web page. What I have accomplished so far is to get Doug Fuller to say that the data shown there is wrong since the switch to Amsher. If the data is wrong, then I don't know that there's anything I can do with it! I look forward to correct data.
Even if we had correct numbers on that page, I don't see how we could come up with an estimate on the set of 4+ loans that should have been sold in the JDB sale that didn't happen. They don't break those out for us! I will apply some more thought to this question.
Doesn't LS or Eric's track each late loan's status change (i.e., current to late to 1-month, etc., and back)? I wonder if there's some way to use ProProsper to get a list of all the loans that were 4+months late as of mid-April (the loans that should have been sold off) and then compile how those loans have performed. Or to get a list of all loans 4+month late as of mid-April that have moved to 3-month or better status? I don't know.
Where do you get the $200k number?
Doug Fuller wrote a comment to his blog post that the best JDB offer was one-third the December 2007 prices. From that, HO prepared a spreadsheet showing the December 2007 prices, the amount of 4+lates in the various categories that received different prices in 12/07 (homeowners, non-homeowner AA/A, etc.), and how much one-third would be. The actual April JDB sales price would have been
$232,761 (at one-third the 12/07 prices). See
http://www.prospers.org/forum/prosper_debt_sale_crashes_and_burns-t7527.0.html;msg117585#msg117585.