underwriter

loan coordinator

business development manager

loan officer

closing coordinator

Rate

GR is a very shady company. Their overtime pay is actually illegal - they call it 'flex pay' or something like that and it equates to about 3 dollars an hour.

Despite experience or qualifications, pay is entry level almost across the board. it is common knowledge that Guaranteed Rate pays well below industry standards.

Salaried positions often work 11-12 hour days..but hey Overtime Right!!???? - yea... 9 dollars per day on average when you work 11-12 hours.

They pay their employees peanuts, but try to keep everyone happy by offering employees a free drink after work every once in awhile.

If you are a recent college grad, its not a bad first gig but anything other than that - RUN.

Management is sloppy and disorganized, as is the hiring process. Nothing works well at GR, no department is effective.

Extremely high turnover rate either from being fired due to challenging a managers ego, or becoming fed up with the garbage pay and long hours.

It is a very cutthroat company and its easy to see why it is so profitable - the lower 80% of the company makes the stockholders and upper management real fat. 

The work is extremely repetitive and soul crushing, but hey... picnic on the roof from 5:30 - 7:30!!! AND THERE'S A GYM!!!!! (The gym is a closet sized room with two treadmills - oh and you can't use it as you will never have the freedom from your workload to use it. Most people are punished for taking a full lunch break)

If you have any dignity or self respect, take any other job with any other company. 

The Loan Officers do well financially, and almost all of them are drug addicts.

They treat their borrowers like trash after  they have them locked in and often sell their loans without notice.

I was lied to about the responsibilities of the job and lied to about what the work I would be doing would be.

I would have quit immediately after my first day, however I took the job knowing I would be leaving after a few short months.


RUN!!!!!!!


It is funny to laugh about their mass-produced responses to any critique they receive on reviews or social media.. Yea call their customer satisfaction dept.. that'll fix everything!!!!!

I was hired in June of 2021 by a recruiter that actually reached out to me, as I did not necessarily complete a GR application beforehand. I was persuaded that growth "Grow For Good" was a huge part of the company's culture and what GR strove for when it came to their employees and affiliated companies. I was a Mortgage Coordinator (processor), so of course I had hopes of eventually growing with the company that basically says This Is What We Do. However, because work became slow and Loan Officers are scarce I was apart of a group of people who was abruptly Let Go, out of nowhere. I worked at GR for about 8 months and witnessed and/or heard of at least THREE major layoffs, which I was apart of the last one. This is devastating! I actually left a company in which I was comfortable with under the notion that I'd excel and get the opportunity to grow and go further but that turned out not to be true and to top it off there was no warning as to "This could be happening to you or your department"- a heads up would have been appreciated and the least any company could do, if they were decent. I understand layoffs do happen and I am not the only one, nor will I be the last, but I didn't think a billion dollar company like GR would allow something so minor as "slowed work" affect the employees that they claim to care so much about, especially during known slow months for mortgage companies in general. We have families, bills, mortgages, people we care for, we need health insurance, our livelihoods, etc. Everything that I thought I was working hard towards was shattered on a Monday after receiving an e-mail from upper management scheduling a mandatory 30 min zoom right before it even happen to announce the layoff was "effective immediately", how discourteous.

You are expected to perform. There is some general on the job training but it's best you come in knowing your stuff. GR attempts to cultivate a positive workplace. I agree fully with that statement. You are put into a position to succeed. It's up to you if you want to take it that extra yard. The ASM position is not your typical ASM role. Be weary of that going in. Direct Manager has issue with control. 

The people in servicing are bright individuals but lack direction and structure. There is general favoritism displayed regularly and it's not hidden. The overall department moral when I left was poor but steps were being taken to fix it. Their hiring practices are hindered by below average pay. However, managers and above are compensated properly. Poor behavior by employees, such as people sleeping at their desk, is tolerated due to lack of uniformity of how people are disciplined (see favoritism comment). This is a PC company. General off the cuff remarks are HR material. Professionalism is a must. You represent one of the top mortgage companies in America. 

Executive management drives the train. You will be challenged and it's for your benefit. Just make sure you produce. The Exe VP in my chain of command was awesome, a brilliant mind and unlike anyone I've encountered. 

Parking is tough. The work seating environment is tough. Benches and rows of people. You are given laptops with less than adequate specs for the amount of multitasking you are expected to do.  Your work space will be loud. Cubs and Soxs general seating/suite tickets are regularly handed out to employees. There are also roof top events (events staff are top notch) and free lunches when production numbers are up. The building is kept very clean but you do flank the EL and metra.

This company grew way faster than they were prepared to handle. The COO proudly proclaims that "[he] is a sales guy, not an operations guy" and it showed. Operations are a complete mess and turnover in support roles like field support-roles, assistants, payroll, IT, HR is insane. HR was chronically allergic to technology (shocking given the company's claim to fame is an award winning app). Management would consistently under cut us to the operators, to the point where almost every operator just did an end-run around us because they knew they would get an exception/rush ticket from our bosses. All of this boiled down to a genuinely miserable experience. We even had a group meeting where all of us apparently looked so miserable that a visiting bigwig commented on it, and so we were directed to "smile" and "look happy" in subsequent meetings.We were consistently given a workload that necessitated OT, while at the same time being told that working more than 8 hours is frowned upon in the company culture because "everyone needs a break," work life balance, etc. As a result, pretty much everyone at the lower levels (hourly workers) in my department was working during their off hours just to keep up. They spout a lot of stuff about employing the best and having grit. The truth is that we all watched the best leave for better salaries, and the ones that were left worked their ops staff so hard that most of those would quit within a few months. At the end of the day, my Co-workers were great. Everyone knew they had been dealt a bad hand and were all just trying to keep calm and carry on.

Coming at this from a corporate employee perspective, NOT a loan officer (I think the company treats LOs way better than everyone else). GR really likes to push the idea that it's a progressive workplace, which unfortunately in 2021 is completely untrue. Maybe it is for being in the financial sector (this is just a guess - I had never worked at a finance company before GR), but it lacks support for employees in terms of work-life balance, compensation and benefits, and career growth. Unfortunately effective PEOPLE management is not pushed for managers, just expertise in their fields. This leaves employees without paths for career growth and leaves people feeling undervalued and overworked. This is not just my feeling, it's really common among all the people in my department I've had conversations about this with.

The CEO is all about doing good for others but there is little focus on doing as much good for employees/within the company. It has some resource groups for employees, which are helpful, but there is absolutely no support in your regular workday. Constantly working to make OTHER people money without the company/managers having any regard for our wellbeing, satisfaction or career growth. It's all about making money and funding loans but the people who make it all happen behind the scenes (us corporate employees) are totally disregarded. 

To add in a little positivity, I do love the relationships I've made with my teammates. I got lucky in that way.

Terrible idea becoming a loan coordinator. 5-6 weeks of training that barely teaches you what actually goes on within the role. I’m not sure how  my regional operations manger got the job because whenever I went to them with a question, they never had an answer and always sent me to another loan coordinator or production manager for help. VPs that I worked with were very terrible and snobbish. I didn’t understand how I was working several of their loan files but was told not to contact them and to go to the production manager or mortgage consultant if I had any questions. COMMUNICATION HERE IS TERRIBLE!!! No one responds to emails on time or requests that are needed to get your job done, until we’re about a few days away from scheduled closing date then everyone wants to scramble and question why the file isn’t in closing. Like ??? VPs/SAs will communicate with clients and not loop loan coordinators in and it makes us look very foolish at times for not knowing and in turn upset customers. VPs and PMs also tend to set very unrealistic closing dates, especially when they know a specific client has been unresponsive. It’s a very stressful job as is but with the lack of support/communication from the PODs it makes it almost impossible to ever close on time. It sometimes takes days for people to respond to an email... They don’t answer their phones either and are quick to claim you did not leave a voicemail. GUARANTEED RATE REALLY NEEDS TO DO BETTER!! 

Guaranteed Rate has been good most of my time here, I want to be clear. However, over the past three years, they've been acquiring smaller competitor companies in the southeast and west coast in order to increase their market share, seemingly because interest rates were never going back up (surprise! They have.) I asked repeatedly if the growth was going to stall and if the positions of my team were safe, and I was told yes. Now, after acquiring two companies and bringing in their personnel, our team has been given multiple conflicting directives over a three-month period, been promised performance evaluations that are four months behind, lived with uncertainty about their job status, been strong-armed into using a CMS that is messy and tedious at best, and work under micromanaged conditions - work is being audited without any info on what the purpose of the audit is, other than a new standard. Clock in times were changed three times in one week!

I used to enjoy coming in to work with my team. I liked commuting to the office, and I really appreciated that they set us up to work from home when the pandemic hit. The benefits are still very good. However, I'm underpaid, incredibly stressed out, and worried for the small group I manage. I know they are. If GR thought they wouldn't be able to manage the expenses of new acquisitions, they shouldn't have bought them out. Now, people on the ground are the ones paying the price.

I don't like it here anymore. I'm considering quitting.

I was hired as a sales assistant for a new VP who was supposed to be very successful and provide high volume for the company. In my interview, they really talked up the company and the daily job duties required of me. I was really excited. Well, management didn't do their homework and as it turned out, the new VP decided he did not need an assistant. Management didn't know what to do with me. I sat around for 2 months taking online classes, even asking my immediate supervisor for something to do everyday. I even signed up and took the 20 Hour SAFE Comprehensive Mortgage Test Prep. Eventually they tried to partner me with another VP who had a history of being difficult to work with, who later admitted there wasn't enough volume to support me. I felt management purposely set me up for failure. They had a company wide layoff and in my exit meeting they blamed me for getting laid off! I have never been so insulted in my whole career. I don't think there's anything I could have done in this situation. The overall company atmosphere was odd. I felt management was not approachable or caring of their employees at all. By far the worst mortgage company I've ever worked for. 

After my experience, in speaking with two other colleagues (both experienced mortgage professionals) were also laid off by GRI in prior years and both expressed they didn't care for the company either.

A typical day at work consisted of;  Prioritizing my work for the day/week, returning phone calls, taking care of fundings, satisfying conditions on my approvals, working on new applications, contacting customers for missing information on loan application, updated paystubs, asset statements or whatever I needed at that time. We were responsible for the analyzing our customer's income and credit before the loan was submitted to underwriting. 
Meeting strict deadlines. I regularly worked with title, escrow, appraisal company and credit vendors to get the job completed. 
The management was very supportive and wonderful. I had the support I needed and could go to them with anything. 
There wasn't much to say about my colleagues, we all kept very busy and sat in cubicles. Our office was very quiet. Everyone was pleasant and got along well. We worked on teams in the beginning of my employment, but after a while it worked out better just one processor per pipeline. 
The hardest part of the job was contacting customers if they did not qualify for the loan. My main objective was to save them money by lowering their payment and if they were in a bad situation and did not qualify that was a tough phone call to make. 
The most enjoyable part of my job, as with any job is regular contact with my customers and the positive feedback I would get from them. 
Keeping them happy made all the hard work worth it.

Processing mortgages is processing mortgages going from one company to another should only require learning a new system and maybe a slight few differences. Processing at Guaranteed Rate makes you feel like you dont know what your doing. Always being screamed at and threatened by the regional sales manager is a daily thing. Even while closing some of the highest numbers on the team, yet still being told by the sales manager you are doing a horrible job just sets the environment. But at the same time being told by the processing manager how great your doing. so you never know if your coming or going. The sales team talks to you however they want and no one bats an eye, cursing and yelling at operations staff to get this or that done is the norm. Loan officers at every company are going to have strong personalities but here they are allowed to treat you like you are worthless because that is how the managers treat you. They expect you to work all hours of the day/night/weekend, but they dont want you to clock overtime, even at night they will just keep calling until you answer and then get mad if you dont stop what you are doing with your family right at that moment to go back and work on another loan, so there is no work life balance at all. As far as job security goes, there is none you are constantly being threatened by the regional that you are going to be let go.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Underwriter 4 salaries reported	$49,725 per year
Loan coordinator 7 salaries reported	$50,143 per year
Business development manager 4 salaries reported	$57,500 per year
Loan officer 3 salaries reported	$128,333 per year
Closing coordinator 5 salaries reported	$17.25 per hour

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