Better.com

Better Home & Finance Holding Company

Company type	Public
Industry	Mortgage origination, Financial services
Founded	February 2014 (2014-02)
Founder	Vishal Garg
Headquarters	New York City , United States
Area served	United States, United Kingdom
Key people	Vishal Garg (Founder and CEO), Harit Talwar (Chairperson)
Products	Digital mortgage origination, title insurance, home insurance, property crowdfunding
Number of employees	Approximately 8,000 (estimate based on layoffs and hires)
Website	better.com

Better Home & Finance Holding Company (operating as Better or Better.com), headquartered in New York City, provides digital mortgage origination services along with related offerings such as title insurance and home insurance across the United States and the United Kingdom.

The company manages mortgage underwriting, processing, and closing on behalf of lenders before selling these loans to secondary market investors.

History

The firm was established in February 2014 by Vishal Garg, motivated by challenges he faced during his initial home purchase.

In 2016, Better launched its mortgage platform and secured approval as a Fannie Mae seller/servicer.

By 2019, the platform experienced notable growth among homebuyers from traditionally underrepresented groups, a trend credited to its automated workflows and reduced dependence on human brokers.

July 2021 saw Better acquire UK-based digital mortgage broker Trussle for $9 million; Trussle was later sold to OneDome in May 2025.

In September 2021, Better diversified into property crowdfunding through the acquisition of London’s Property Partner.

Harit Talwar joined as chairperson in May 2022, bringing expertise from his tenure at Goldman Sachs and Marcus by Goldman Sachs.

A partnership with Amazon was announced in February 2023, enabling Amazon employees to leverage their stock holdings as collateral for home loans, albeit with elevated interest rates.

Better became a publicly traded company in August 2023 via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, which included investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund. Despite this, the stock price declined sharply after the debut.

In June 2022, a former senior executive initiated litigation alleging investor misrepresentation; however, following an SEC inquiry that found no wrongdoing, the lawsuit was voluntarily dropped.

Layoffs

In December 2021, CEO Vishal Garg conducted layoffs of 900 employees through a videoconference call and immediately revoked their access to company systems. His remarks during the announcement were contentious, describing some employees as "slow," "dumb," and "embarrassing," and admitting he had "hired the wrong people." After widespread backlash, Garg took a one-month leave before resuming his role in January 2022. That same year, Better expanded its workforce in India by adding 1,000 employees, prompting scrutiny regarding cost-reduction strategies.

On March 8, 2022, the company announced another round of layoffs affecting roughly 3,000 workers—about one-third of its staff—with some individuals only learning about their termination upon receiving severance payments. A subsequent layoff occurred in April 2023; this time affected employees were notified via individual phone calls and received severance packages including at least two months’ salary, up to three months of COBRA health benefits, and job placement support.

June 2022 witnessed the departure of three senior executives. By August that year, an internal leak revealing over 250 US employees slated for termination resulted in those responsible being dismissed. Better.com faced accusations of attempting to bypass the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act by conducting layoffs in groups smaller than the 250-employee threshold.

Additional workforce reductions took place in June 2023, bringing total job cuts since 2021 to approximately 4,000. This included dissolving the internal real estate brokerage team which had comprised around 150 agents in 2021 and generated revenue through a 20% commission on lead generation.