What eBay did for buying and selling, Britain's Zopa hopes to do for lending and borrowing money.

Zopa, which counts Benchmark Capital, the same firm that funded eBay, among its backers, is taking a variant of the auction site's business model and applying it to put people who want to lend in touch with credit-worthy people who want to borrow.

Wow. I need this site.

Let me back up.

I want to buy a boat. And not just a run of the mill Bayliner Capri, I want to buy a tournament wakeboard boat (think Mastercraft, Supra, Tige,...). After shopping around for several weekends and visiting Ski Masters, Gonnason, Cope and McPhetres and Ski Dog Sports I found a few boats I liked and started the process of making offers. Of course I don't want to tie up a lot of capital in a boat so before making an offer I had the stores investigate the possibility of financing. I also approached my bank, Bank of America. I was turned down by every vendor/bank.

It is no surprise that I do not have an American credit history as I've only lived here a year. But it certainly was a surprise to hear that financers were only looking for five years of credit history. They did not care about my financial ability to service the loan only whether or not I had serviced debt in the past. The other twist is that a boat is considered a luxury recreational vehicle and this means the financing requirements are much higher. Of course I have the appropriate credit history in Canada but not a single company would run my Canadian credit. Nor would any consider the fact that I make a very generous salary and have no expenses (I own my car out right and my rent is a comparatively very small percentage of my salary). In fact, the Bank of America recommended that I go buy a car and start making car payments on it in order to build up a credit history so I could buy a boat. This makes no sense as a car payment would be larger than a boat payment! The loan officer informed the difference was that I would be using the car to go to work and earn more money whereas the boat would just be a luxury item. I should have pointed to the large lake separating me from work.

Needless to say I was getting quite discouraged as I was continually being rejected while watching the boats I wanted being sold to more qualified buyers (i.e. American citizens). Finally today, 1st Tech Credit Union came through for me and has approved the necessary amount at a reasonable rate (6.49%). Unfortunately, since I'm a resident alien and not a resident, they will only offer me a 60 month term whereas the typical boat loan maximum term is 144 months. This means my monthly payment is double that of what I was expecting.

So, I would love for the ability to deal with unconventional lenders interested in loaning me $x for a 24 month term at a reasonable rate (corporate +/- 1%).

When I start calling around tomorrow with my pre-approved loan in hand, I sure hope some of the boats I looked at are still sitting on the lot!

(Yeah, I know, life isn't too bad when you can't buy the luxury boat that you had your heart set on with the term you were expecting; I'll stop whining.)
11:07:56 PM   []