'Buyers' Give Old Debts New Life

Published on:
12 September 2006 at 10:21 a.m. ET

Written by: Unknown Author –

http://www.insidearm.com/news/00039863-buyers-give-old-debts-new-life/

The St. Petersberg Times is running a long story on the purchasing of revitalized ?old? or ?dead? debt. Today speculators are buying thousands of these aging accounts at a time and extracting payments the original lenders could not.

The amount of written-off credit card debt sold to debt buyers in 2004 ? $63-billion worth, according to the Nilson Report ? was 100 times the amount sold in 1993. This year, a Las Vegas convention hosted by the Debt Buyers? Association trade group drew 1,400 debt buyers, sellers, brokers, resellers and lawyers.

Asset Acceptance, one of five publicly traded debt buyers, operates a 52,000-square-foot collections center in Riverview. In 2000, the Michigan company sued 25 debtors across Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties. Last year, it sued 3,855.

You can read the entire article at ‘Buyers’ give old debts new life.