The digital homeownership platform
Better’s end goal is the current white whale of lending: building a one-stop-shop that covers every aspect of home buying. Founder and CEO Vishal Garg compared it to grocery shopping and how each type of food has its own aisle in the market. He wants to modernize the mortgage process in the same way that supermarkets brought all the purveyors under one roof.
“We tell investors that ultimately there's a big difference between us and a traditional mortgage company,” Garg said. “All our technologies are developed in house, we control the platform. What you're buying is something that is going to really
Below is a discussion with Garg about the state of the mortgage industry, generating value for shareholders and his response to allegations of creating a hostile work environment. His answers are excerpted and edited for length and clarity.
I don't expect it to be able to actually boost a lot of refi activity because I think most other lenders are ignoring it. There's no systematic way for them to identify these customers and then market to these customers. If you think about the major online comparison sites, none of them really allow any filtering by debt-to-income ratio or credit denial reasons and delinquency.
It's our estimate that the average loan balance for these is going to be about $135,000, which, for a traditional mortgage originator working in a commissioned environment, is not a loan that they would want to do.
We think that our digital-first model will enable us to finance billions of dollars of loans to this customer base, primarily because for us, it doesn't make a difference whether it's a $135,000 loan or a $500,000 loan.
I think the biggest challenge is preserving culture, making sure when you grow from 70 people to 7,000 people that you maintain that customer-first culture.
We still drive every day as hard as we did two, three, four, five years ago. And I think that's tough. We have a really great core team and a really great group of people that we
I would say the biggest thing going forward is to make sure that people are coming to Better for the right reasons — to make home buying better for all Americans. People who are givers, not takers. People who want to be in a fast growth company, people who are goal-oriented and achievement-oriented. Not role-oriented or title-oriented.
We're expanding the full suite of products that we deliver to our customers to make their lives easier. Home inspection, appraisal, title, homeowners insurance, life insurance, disability insurance. Each and every one of those verticals push to make the process as seamless as possible for the consumer. It's a combination of people, product, technology all coming together. It’s the whole stack all in one place.
Every American consumer wants one place to go for their home, rather than the 15 places they go today. I think there's a race to try to make that happen. That's what's made Walmart a great company. That's what's made Costco a great company.
We're not going to deliver steady growth, we're gonna deliver explosive growth. We’re slightly less than a 1% market share today. There's a long way to go between 1% and then 10%, 20% and 40%. Ultimately, it's our understanding that about only 18% of Americans shop around to get the best rate when they pick who they want to finance their home. So that tells us we should easily be able to grow to 18% market share, because everyone searching for a better rate should come to Better. Beyond that, we have to engage in financial education so that all Americans take advantage of a better rate. And then hopefully, that can help us double or triple our market share.
I'm not better all the time. I'm learning how to get better every day. I push really hard. That article highlighted that we had teammates that weren't delivering to the standards I hold myself to with respect to customers. I still respond to customer queries. If you've ever created an account and you email me as a customer, I'll email you back. And so if I hold myself to those standards, I hold everyone else to those standards too.
It's not easy. But growing 100x in the past three years isn't for the faint of heart or the faint of will. If you don't want to hold yourself accountable to a customer's needs, then you should probably go and work somewhere else... I think the number one thing that the article said was they didn't think that we would be able to grow or keep going. And I think
The only thing I’m confident about is volatility. Right now,
There's