Kiva Lending Page: Sort By Repayment Term

[Guest]

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[KivanSteven]

Thats about as long as they get Antonia   I think as long as the MFIs keep the 18-24 month loans attractive to the lender, they will fund without much extra fuss.

[waywardcats]

That could be Ingvar, Im not sure we can offer any hard evidence of your point or mine, but I will concede to your point; however, I do agree that Kiva enthusiasts are more likely to loan short term, under 12 months, as opposed to long term, over 12 months. 

For myself, being new to lending, at first I also didn't look at loan terms and just went for the connections.  Then I realized that I didn't want to wait that long to re-lend, so I searched for a few shorter term loans. 

Now that I have loaned as much as I can safely have out there, and will need to rely on re-lending for my fix, I at least only have a few months to wait.

However, I am going to strive to keep as balanced a portfolio as possible, including loan terms.  A few long term loans in my portfolio will make for a nice balance, even if I don't get my lending fix as often on that portion of my Kiva fund.

Just my 10 cents...

[KivanSteven]

Thats similar to the pattern I followed.  I dont recall the length of my first 3 loans, but after I used those to test out the Kiva waters a bit, I really got into lending--all thanks due to KF really--everyone was so energetic and engaging here that it was like an epiphany for me to get out there and lend away. 

I started loaning solely based on how much potential there was for a personal connection with an entrepreneur.  Then as time went on and I became even more involved in lending, I started seeking out some shorter terms, usually in the 6-9 month range, due to the fact that I was eager to relend frequently.  After I had several handfulls of shorter duration loans, I realized that I was able to seek out longer term loans if desireable because I would, in a few months, have a decent stream of re-loans to tame the craving for lending.

Now I maintain a steady mix of 6-12 month loans with a few that fall below or above that range.  Kiva cant come out and market their organization by saying its about feeding our personal cravings and obsessions for loaning, but I think they had their fingers crossed once things took off that that was exactly the mentality that would help drive some of their success in the microfinance arena--and Im sure they dont mind one bit the late night loan to go along with the late night snack.

[saabnet]

When I find loans on Kiva.org by repayment term, just under the Sort By box is a nice little RSS feed button (Save this search as a feed:), but when I click on it, I always get this error when trying to add the live feed to my Firefox (version 2 and 3):

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it.

Is anyone else having this same problem with the RSS feeds for finding loans? I don't use an external RSS reader, so I'm not really interested in that. I want it in my browser.

-Scott