Looking for web site where people can invest or borrow money that is
run like an auction e.g. Ebay. The idea is that if you have money you
can invest in high, medium or low risk and you can also visit the site
to borrow money.  Investor's money is spread across several borrowers.
I read about this site in a magazine about 6 months ago and I have
done much Internet searching myself using 'bid, loan, invest' but am
unable to find it.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 28 May 2005 21:08 PDT

I believe you are referring to Zopa:

"This week saw the latest twist on what's come to be known as the
'eBay model' with the launch of Zopa - an online loans service that
works in a similar way. Anyone with some spare cash can offer it up
for a loan, through Zopa. Lenders set their own interest rates and can
choose which borrowers to lend to, based on their credit rating.
 
Zopa hopes to tap into the public's suspicion of highly profitable banks 
Borrowers, meanwhile, can pick a rate that's right for them and
because Zopa is simply assisting the transaction, not lending its own
assets, it claims to take a smaller cut (1% of the amount borrowed)
than a bank. Safeguards are built in to help prevent lenders being
fleeced and the whole outfit is sanctioned by the FSA - Britain's
financial services watchdog."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4334391.stm

Here is Zopa's website:

http://www.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/

Please let me know if this is the site you seek.

I'm delighted to have been able to help you find your site!

I located Zopa by using this search string:

Google Web Search: loan OR lend "like an auction" OR "like ebay"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=loan+OR+lend+%22like+an+auction%22+OR+%22like+ebay

The Google search linked above took me to this BBC News article:

BBC News: If the world was run like eBay 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4334391.stm

And to this article on Malaysia.net:

Malaysia.net: Zopa - like eBay for money
http://www.malaysia.net/node/1185

A visit to the Zopa website, Zopa.com, confirmed my belief that this
was likely to be the site you're seeking:

"Zopa is a place where creditworthy people who want to borrow money
can get together with people who are happy to lend it to them. And
because there's no middleman - the borrower just pays a 1% exchange
fee to Zopa up front - both get a great deal...

Lenders can choose what rate to lend at and, by looking at the
markets, decide what sort of people to lend to and when.

Borrowers can choose to take a rate offered or to wait and see whether
the rates drop. Both avoid paying needless chunks of commission to
Financial MegaCorp plc and can get better rates of interest as a
result."

Zopa: What is Zopa?
http://zopa.com/ZopaWeb/public/what.shtml

Best regards,
pinkfreud

Spot on

Hi,
Maybe the loan auction website never materialized.
Estimating the credit risk makes lending on that basis too complicated
to just run an auction.
Some of the websites that do offer loan financing apparently pass
borrowers' details on to a few or several potential lenders, thereby 
- perhaps -  providing competition on the pricing/interest rate.

hi fblogg-ga
Closest legit thing to your request is lending tree
http://www.lendingtree.com/

lenders compete on rates for your loan, or you can also register as a
lender to compete for clients.

aNoNim

Dear pinkfreud-ga
This IS the site. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this and
wonder how you found it. I used as many search keywords as I could
think of! Wonderful.

Thank you anonim-ga for your response:

Closest legit thing to your request is lending tree
http://www.lendingtree.com/

However, I can find no such site and shile there are many instances of
'lendingtree' on Google, there are no hits returned for
"www.lendingtree.com"!

fblogg.