# Better.com

Better Home & Finance Holding Company doing business as Better or Better.com, headquartered in New York City, provides mortgage origination and related services such as title insurance and home insurance online in the United States and United Kingdom.
Better processes, underwrites and closes mortgages for lenders such as Citibank and American Express. Better sells mortgages to approximately 30 secondary mortgage market investors, including Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo. The company secures lead generation from personal finance companies such as American Express, Credit Karma, and NerdWallet.

## History

In February 2014, Vishal Garg founded the company after he and his wife had a negative experience obtaining a mortgage to buy their first home.
In 2016, the company launched Better Mortgage and was approved to be a Fannie Mae seller/servicer.
In April 2019, the company partnered with Ally Financial to operate its mortgage platform. The number of people from traditionally underrepresented groups buying homes through Better's mortgage lending platform increased significantly in 2019, a development that The New York Times suggested was linked to the company's digital processes and minimal reliance on human brokers.
In July 2021, Better acquired Trussle, a UK digital mortgage broker, for $9 million. In September 2021, Better acquired Property Partner, a London-based crowdfunding platform.
In May 2022, Harit Talwar was hired as chairperson.
In February 2023, the company announced a deal with Amazon whereby Amazon employees are able to pledge their stock as collateral for a loan to cover the down payment on a house purchase, albeit at a slightly higher interest rate.
In August 2023, the company became a public company via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company that included an investment from SoftBank Vision Fund; shares plummeted immediately after the merger.
In June 2022, a former senior executive at Better filed a lawsuit alleging that the company misled investors in its filings. After an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission found no issues the Plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the case.

### Layoffs and controversial comments by CEO

In December 2021, Garg laid off 900 employees by videoconference and locked their electronic devices from accessing company material. Garg also made comments to employees that were deemed "unruly", telling employees that he "hired the wrong people" and referring to employees as "slow," "dumb," and "embarrassing". After much criticism, Garg took approximately a month off, returning in January 2022.
On March 8, 2022, the company announced that an additional 3,000 people, or approximately one-third of employees, were laid off. Some employees learned of their layoff when they received severance pay, before Better.com told them they were to be laid off.
The company instituted another round of layoffs in April 2023; in this round, affected employees received individual calls, a severance package that included a minimum of 60 days compensation, up to three months of health coverage through COBRA, and assistance in their job searches.
In June 2022, three senior executives left the company.
In August 2022, a list of 250 or more US-based employees who were about to be terminated in another round of layoffs was leaked internally, leading to the termination of the employees who leaked the information. The company was accused of circumventing the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 by laying people off in groups of 249 employees, under the 250 minimum that triggers the act.
In June 2023, more employees were laid off, bringing total layoffs since 2021 to 4,000. The in-house real estate broker team was eliminated. The company had 150 agents as of 2021 and received 20% of agents' commissions in exchange for lead generation.

## Awards and recognition

The company has received the following awards and recognition:
* Ranked 1st on the Top Startups List for 2021 and 2020 by LinkedIn
* Ranked 1st on the list of Best Small and Medium Workplaces in New York by Fortune
* Ranked 15th on the Disruptor 50 2020 list by CNBC
* Listed on the FinTech 50 for 2020 by Forbes