Where to start with Lower.com… I started with the company about 2 years ago when they were still Homeside Financial, it starts off exciting because you’re with a young company who is growing and you feel that you can grow with the company because you’re starting so young. Everyone starts off as an account manager where day to day activities are making about 600-700 cold calls per day so you can transfer leads to the loan officers. In this position, your goal is to be promoted to loan officer. It can take anywhere from 2-9 months (average of 3-4) depending on the timing of everything and how quickly you can pass the SAFE Act test. Once you get promoted to a loan officer, you will actually start to make a little bit of money. It starts off great because you’re going from making 700 calls per day to talking to about 5-7 new people per day. The days as a loan officer go by slightly faster which is good but there is ZERO flexibility in the role. You NEED to be at your desk/in the morning meeting at 9am; don’t be late, but also, don’t be early because they don’t count that as time on the clock. Lunch during the week is at 1pm-2pm, as a loan officer, if you’re on a call until 1:15 because an account manager sent you a transfer right before lunch, then your lunch is now only 45 minutes. A lot of people (including myself) thought they could do that long term, but then after a few months go by and it’s the same thing every day and you don’t learn anything new, you get tired of it. Are the people there fun to work with? Absolutely. Everyone is in their 20’s and has a similar goal of making money. I promise no amount of money is worth it to work here. Now when you interview, they are going to promise you the world, 6 figures in the first year, and show you the only example of that because there has only been one person in the last 3 years (most of the time, if it’s too good to be true, that’s probably the case). Lots of people make 50k-65k but there are still a lot of people making less than 40k. I was told the saying believe none of what you hear and half of what you see; that is absolutely the case for this company, I feel like I was lied to just about everyday and if it wasn’t a lie, we were being sold on why something bad was actually good (it usually wasn’t). I would talk to people everyday about when they were going to be quitting and just about everyone has an expiration date of when they can’t take it anymore. At the end of the day, I can go on a rant for hours about Lower/homeside, but there is a reason that there are only about 20-25 people who have worked there past 2 years and probably half of them are too unmotivated to switch careers/cannot and the other half are management people because they helped start the company and even “put together the Ikea desks” that they will tell you about every 6 months. Please take this post as you will, but overall, I would not recommend working here. I can promise that even if you do stick it out for a year or however you want to convince yourself to work here, you will think of this post and you will say “man, that post was right”. Best of luck to you in your job search, YOU CAN DO BETTER!
Last thing, definitely don’t work here if you don’t want to work on the weekends/after standard work hours. You will be miserable because you work one Saturday per month and borrowers will want to talk to you at any hours of the night, there have been many Friday night where I am out and have to talk a borrower back into doing a loan because they are getting cold feet. Also, the product you are selling is a little sketchy, everyone knows it at the company and Lower has had to convince the credit unions that they get the loans though to keep allowing them to sell as they are. If they did not agree, lower would lose all of their business because the rates on their loans are so high (mostly on refi). You will also realize that borrowers can just go straight to the credit union that we use and usually get a better loan because they don’t actually have to do a refinance with lower and they can just get a HELOC with the credit union and keep their 3%-4% mortgages. IN ORDER TO BE SUCCESSFUL YOU HAVE TO BE UNETHICAL.
