Subprime Market

See: Subprime. See: Market.

It's a market. Just like a normal bond market or a normal stock market or a normal real estate market or even a normal Safeway.

Subprime loans happen all the time, and they're not as dramatic as the name implies. In fact, they're just "below prime," like....loans made to people without excellent credit.

So...how do you attain vaunted subprime status? Eh, maybe you're new to the land of borrowing money, so you have no credit history. Or maybe you did have a history, but didn't realize that you can't just spend without paying, and that loans carry interest.

There are literally millions of subprime loans made out there in the giant financial cloud in the sky. They get traded like stocks and bonds as well. As in: "Hey, I have 143 subprime auto loans that pay an average of 9.7%; 7 of them are late, the rest are fine; durations range from 2.3 to 11.6 years with an average of 6.1 years." (Duration, as in: when the loans are fully paid off.)

Someone buying that, say, $2 million worth of loans would stand to make just under 200 grand a year if everyone paid off on plan, or on schedule. And that's a lot of "yield" in today's world, where prime borrowers pay closer to 3% than 10%.

So...it's a market. Yeah, there's risk. But you as a lender get paid for taking the risk in the form of big, fat, juicy interest rates going to your coffers. Or bumpers. Or curbs. Or whatever you're loaning money for borrowers to do.