This place is by far the most horrific place to work or get a home mortgage. Just go to their site, look at the average rates in which they lock loans, then look at the APR. The APR expresses the cost of doing a loan as a percentage. There are always costs associated with a loan. You can either finance the costs, or pay a higher interest rate to cover the costs. Most people finance the costs. If your interest rate is, let's say, 4.875% and you do a no closing cost loan and pay the costs in rate, the APR should be around 4.899% (daily interest charges will still have to be calculated). Under normal circumstances if you finance the charges with the same rate, it should be about an 8th of a percent higher; so around 5%. Look on their website for the APR compared to the rates of mortgages they've closed... THEY ARE OVER A HALF A POINT HIGHER!!! Why do you ask (people in the industry will understand this)? Because in order to get the national average par rate with this company, you have to pay up to 3% of the loan amount in discount points at FFG!!! So a $200K loan is going to cost an additional $6K in fees, on top of title fees, escrow fees, daily interest charges, and THE $2,775 ADDITIONAL FFG HOUSE FEES!!! If you're not in the industry, this basically means they're charging you a ridiculous amount of money to close a loan with them. RESPA (look it up) does not allow originators to make money from yield spread premium (look it up) anymore. FFG found a way around that by raping the consumer in discount and house fees. That's why 99% of the loans they close are FHA; the fees make the loan-to-value ratio higher than 80%, and the only route the homeowner has is to go FHA, which requires a 1% upfront mortgage insurance and PMI.
Here's another fishy thing about this company; according to the Home Valuation Code of Conduct Act that was passed in lenders are not allowed to have any contact with appraisers prior to the appraisal and have to order appraisals through a 3rd party Appraisal Management Company (AMCs). Somehow FFG has found a way around AMCs. They claim to have their own AMC, which I'm pretty sure is illegal, or at best, unethical... Probably both. And I know for a fact that they directly contact appraisers before appraisals are done. Hmmmmmmm...
Now to give you a taste of the employment atmosphere. It is a sweatshop. If you get hired on in an entry level position, you will be hired on as a Mortgage Professional and sit in your chair for 9 hours a day calling some of the worst leads I've ever seen. Trigger leads are leads provided by the credit bureaus. If you get your credit pulled at one lender, the bureaus have the right to actually sell your information to parasitic lenders such as FFG for a low low price. Shady, but legal (hopefully outlawed soon. Some states, such as Connecticut, have already done so. Probably the reason FFG does not do mortgages there). Also the cheapest leads, and the absolute hardest to convert to a true lead. FFG acts as if they're golden. And some of their trigger leads are over 4 months old!!! Imagine calling someone who applied for a mortgage back in October who does not know how you got their info; not the happiest of a phone call.
I almost forgot the constant micromanaging! If you leave your seat, for let's say 2 minutes to take a leak, they freak out and ask where you've been. If the phone is not to your ear for 2 seconds, they freak out (they want you to call the same 40 leads repeatedly for no less than 150 times a day). They promise you roads paved with gold with their matrix or metrix system (never really found out exactly how it's pronounced. Different people say it different ways), but in reality it's just a $10/hr job.
Now to the "Assistant Vice President of Sales" job I was hired on as. I was promised 4 Mortgage Professionals to hire that would make these calls for me and pass me up warm leads. I had one. That lasted a week. I was promised a base salary plus a tier/bonus structure that would allow me to make up to $151K a year. I was then demoted to $12.50/hr for lack of performance (maybe because I wasn't provided the employees I was promised? Or because they threw me into their bassackwards system with absolutely no training? Or maybe it was the 4 month old trigger leads that I was provided, and not the fresh ones I was promised), plus a bonus structure that would allow me to make an additional $1,000 a month. Do you have a calculator? Yup. That's exactly $37K a year max! Woohoo! The base pay I was originally SIGNED A CONTRACT to make!!! Oh yeah, remember that fancy title in parentheses above? If you have a title like that, or manager in your title, you are not eligible for over-time. This is a key point. If you get hired as an "Assistant Vice President of Sales" or any other manager position, you will be expected to show up at 8:30A.M. And stay until at least 8:30P.M. If you leave at 7P.M., like you're supposed to, you will be scowled at and reprimanded. Here is your typical day; an 8:30A.M. Manger meeting, followed by a 9A.M. Divisional Meeting, followed by a 9:30 Regional Meeting, followed by a call block until lunch, then a 2:30 Regional Meeting, and if you're really lucky, a 3P.M. Basics Meeting, covering such cheesy schit as A.I.D.A., "feel, felt, found", hometown mechanic, and other retarded subjects that will make you think you're on the set of Glengary Glen Ross Part 2. If 2-3 managers decide to go home at exactly 7 P.M., they will schedule one of these mind numbing Basics Meetings for 7:45 the next evening to make sure you stay well past your scheduled hours.
The emails... Ohhh the emails. They call them Chatter Emails. Every time someone does something like take an application, pull credit, or wipe their arse, you have to send a company-wide email congratulating them. There are 6 branches in 6 different cities. You're looking at a minimum of 900 ridiculous "atta-boy" emails a day with contents such as "Way to go, Joe!!!" Counter-productive, seeing that you get your schit leads via email (don't know why they don't use a lead engine like everyone else). Kinda makes it hard to sift through all the b.S. To find the emails you actually need to see.
By far the most miserable work environment I've ever been in... And I've been covered in Kenny Rogers's poo when I plumbed!!! Yes THE Kenny Rogers! I would do that anytime instead of working at this sweatshop.
So if you're keeping score, they absolutely rape homeowners with their ridiculous fees and discount (I guess that's why the average originator there closes only 3 loans a month), they will micromanage you like a pre-schooler, you will work yourself into an early grave for a silly title they give you, you WILL be lied to repeatedly, and their methods and equipment are archaic and counter-productive.
POTENTIAL EMPLOYEES AND HOMEOWNERS MUST STAY AWAY FROM FFG!!!
(I can't wait to see their propagandistic response to this. They know I speak the truth)
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