A Few Important Notes About the Debt to Income Ratio at Prosper

I’ve been reading how some people think that the debt-to-income ratio isn’t that helpful at Prosper. When I listed my loan, I just plugged in my income and that was it. I didn’t have to verify my income as I believe Tim at My Money Forest had to do when he signed up for Prosper.

Not verifying the income could be one way that the debt-to-income ratio is off if a borrower chooses to exaggerate their income (which, by the way, if discovered will terminate your membership at Prosper and will not be tolerated). Prosper can at any time before your loan is funded request more information about you and it appears that they are doing that to select funded loans.

There’s another way it could be off and I’m proof….it doesn’t take into consideration total household debt!!

My jaw about hit the floor when I saw that Prosper gave me a 24% debt-to-income ratio. I’ve made it public on my blog that it is more around 50% (includes total household income and household debt). That’s about twice the ratio that Prosper gave me.

One difference is that Prosper does not include mortgage payments. That lowers my monthly debt by approximately $340 so that helps to lower my ratio.

The biggest factor is that my husband’s debt is not included. The credit report pulled on borrowers only gives the borrower’s debt. While it is true that my husband’s debt is his and mine is mine (technically), I consider all of it our debt and include it in my ratio.

While I like the 24% ratio that Prosper gave me, it doesn’t give a good representation of our debt load. This may be something for Lenders to keep in mind when they see an attractive debt-to-income ratio. If I wasn’t blogging about my finances, you wouldn’t have any idea that our debt load is that high.

Posted by Tricia on June 11, 2006 at 1:26 PM in Prosper Borrowing | 1 Comment »
You can leave a response or trackback from your site.

Newer Posts Older Posts

Anonymous responded:
Posted: June 13th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
I’m with you on this Debt-to-Income ration. I signed up as a lender initially, but wanted to see what my ratio was, so I went as far as needed to see my ratio and it is 6%. I cannot figure out how they got 6%. I can leave out everything, but credit card and auto loans, and still only get as low as 14%. Anyway, good luck with the loan!