Better Home & Finance Holding Company (BETR)
NASDAQ: BETR · Real-Time Price · USD
17.40
-2.75 (-13.67%)
Nov 10, 2026, 11:08 AM EST - Market open
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q3 2026

Nov 9, 2026

Summary

Q3 loan volume grew 15% YoY, while revenue missed guidance and Adjusted EBITDA loss included $12.8M of proxy-related costs. Management is cutting expenses and expanding AI, HELOC, and broker distribution to pursue break-even and renewed growth.

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Better Home & Finance Holding Company Third Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode, and following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Monday, November 9th, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Tarek Afifi, Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.

Tarek Afifi
Corporate Finance Team, Better Home & Finance

Welcome to Better Home & Finance Holding Company's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tarek Afifi. I am Better's Corporate Finance Team. Joining me on today's call are Vishal Garg, Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation of Better, and Loveen Advani, Chief Financial Officer of Better. In addition to this conference call, please direct your attention to our third quarter earnings release, which is available on our investor relations website. Also available on our website is an investor presentation. Certain statements we make today may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws that are based on current expectations and assumptions. These expectations and assumptions are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors as discussed further in our SEC filings that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results.

We assume no responsibility to update forward-looking statements other than as required by law. During today's discussion, management will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are relevant in assessing the company's financial performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered replacements for and should be read together with our GAAP results. These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to GAAP financial measures in today's earnings release and investor presentation, both of which are available on the investor relations section of Better's website and when filed in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the SEC. More information as of and for the period ended September 30th, 2026, will be provided upon filing our quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the SEC. I will now turn the call over to Vishal.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to Better 2.0. It is so great to be back with you all. Getting here was a hard-fought battle, and we won the proxy contest because our shareholders believed in us. I would not be on this call today without you. To every shareholder who took the time to sign and send back a green consent card, to our employees who kept serving our customers through all of this, and to our business partners who stuck by us, thank you for continuing to believe in Better. You gave us the opportunity to get this company back on track, and now it is on us to deliver.

Better 2.0 is a return to the culture that grew this company exponentially in our early years, from $500 million in loan volume in 2017 to $58 billion in loan volume funded in 2021, from about $3 million a quarter in revenue to $430 million a quarter in revenue in 2021, and to a company that, at its peak, was generating $50 million a month in EBITDA. What drove that? Speed, ambition, accountability, and a relentless belief that AI and machine learning could help make mortgage and home finance better for all Americans by making it cheaper, faster, and easier. Somewhere along the way, we started adding a ton of things we didn't need.

Now that I'm back with perspective, having spent nearly two and a half months on the outside, I can clearly see what we need to do to bring that culture of growth and drive towards profitability back to Better. This is a company that, as Better 2.0, is centered on creating value for our shareholders, our customers, our partners, and our employees. I want to briefly recap what's happened over the past few months to provide the backdrop to our results. on August 3rd, I was removed as CEO. I spent the next week reflecting on what I do well, what this company does well, and what we both need to get better at. I sought advice from shareholders, partners, and people I trust, then we fought back.

Our advisors told us that only about 1.7% of proxy contests seeking to replace a public company board succeed, and that it could take a year to two. Shareholders representing 52% of the voting power supported us, and we won the proxy contest in two months, the fastest public company proxy return to date. During that time, decisions by the prior board and interim CEO Daniel Lewis hurt the business. $12.8 million of shareholder cash was spent on a proxy contest and a poison pill that was put in place. More specifically, during this time, partnership launches that we had lined up stalled, employee morale suffered, and our conversion, most importantly, slowed. We can see it in the operating data. During my absence under Daniel Lewis and the prior board, just within the months that I was out, loan officer talk time fell by 29%.

Emails and responses sent by salespeople to customers fell by 20%, and the production hours spent by our staff as logged in by our Tinman system fell over 25%. The fact is, the amount of effort and therefore productivity, and that reflected in our results, suffered. Our September and August results are therefore challenged, and this has carried into Q4. When I came back, we assessed the situation and concluded that in the current rate environment, where the 10-year rose 15% in Q3, we had to focus on changing the culture, increasing effort and productivity, and lowering our cost base. To that effect, since my return, we have delayered our management and corporate structure by letting go of managers across the company for over $3.5 million of annualized savings.

Those management responsibilities are now performed by AI agents and dashboards and delivered directly to the most senior people in each part of our organization. These cuts are not temporary. They are roles forever eliminated by AI and will not return as we scale volume. Furthermore, due to Tinman's capabilities, we can identify the employees who remained continuously productive and adapted to using AI. In this market, they found ways to do more with less, help customers, and earn more money. By way of example, since we have implemented AI lead routing, we have seen weekend lock volume 2X from October 24th to the 31st. In addition to these operational improvements, we began taking strategic actions, rebuilding the board by appointing Bing Gordon, founder of Electronic Arts, Steve Sarracino, founder of Activant Capital, and Linda Yaccarino, former CEO of X, to the board.

We removed the poison pill and dismissed the litigation. We finalized terms on the Birmingham Bank sale with the buyer placing EUR 10 million in escrow, which has now been converted into Tier 2 capital into the bank. We kicked off the share buyback program where we have repurchased 6.9% of Class A shares so far. We also committed to a new level of transparency. Every Tuesday, we publish a Better 2.0 scorecard showing what is complete, what remains outstanding, and where timelines have accelerated or have slowed down. As we have said before, we will keep publishing it until we reach Adjusted EBITDA break-even, which is our North Star. Through these scorecards, we have already announced completed actions expected to deliver $30.4 million in annualized savings towards our target of approximately $64.2 million. On a quarterly basis, these completed actions represent $7.6 million in savings.

In Q4, we expect to achieve an additional $7.4 million-$9.4 million in quarterly savings, and we expect Adjusted EBITDA basis operating expenses of $45 million-$47 million. Our goals for Better 2.0 are simple. First, reach break-even as soon as possible. This is our top financial priority, and we are pushing on every lever we control, converting more customers, taking costs out, and using AI to make our people more productive. Second, expand distribution. Adding new partners with large, established customer bases allows us to scale volume and revenue without upfront customer acquisition spending. Third, expand AI across sales, operations, and corporate functions. We are moving from a human-powered-by-AI company to an AI-first company where AI does the work first and the people focus on what AI cannot do. Fourth, establish clear ownership and accountability.

Every initiative in Better 2.0 has a target and a date, and you will see them in our weekly scorecard. Fifth, improve execution speed and consistency. We will hire and reward for ambition, agency, and achievement, and we will hold ourselves to industry standards or greater on every step of the funnel. Now, turning to third quarter results. Loan volume was $1.4 billion, up 15% year-over-year and within our guidance range, while industry volume remained flat over the same period. In our August 3rd board meeting, we expected over $53 million of Q3 revenue and believed that if it weren't for the proxy fight, we would have hit our target. Total net revenues were $45.1 million, up 9% year-over-year, and fell below our guidance range.

Both interest rate headwinds, oil prices, and the general uncertainty around the Iran war weighed on loan volume. We believe the prior board's proxy contest lowered conversion and pushed out partner launches. Our Adjusted EBITDA loss was $29.7 million for Q3. Excluding proxy-related legal, PR, and other expenses of $12.8 million, our Adjusted EBITDA loss would have been approximately $16.9 million, within our guidance range. However, in our August 3rd board meeting, we expected an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $12 million and believed that if it weren't for the proxy fight, we would have hit our target and beyond. Our Tinman AI platform was the principal driver of growth. Platform loan volume grew 64% year-over-year to $792 million, and 57% of total loan volume, up from 40% a year ago, as our channel mix continued to shift towards the platform.

Now that we have a renewed focus and drive with Better 2.0, there is exciting growth ahead of us. Expanding our distribution channels is our top growth priority. Just last week, we launched Better's AI-powered HELOC with a large existing partner. HELOC is the right product for the current rate environment, and this partner serves a large customer base with significant home equity. We are building on the experience and capabilities developed through our existing relationship with this partner to accelerate the rollout and scale of this partnership. In wholesale, we are full speed ahead. With 39 mortgage brokerages signed, representing total addressable home equity volume of $400 million per year, we believe we have a product that achieves brokers' goals and a real right to win most, if not all, of this volume.

Brokers want competitive rates, fast answers, and confidence that their borrowers will have a smooth experience all the way through closing. That is what we are building with Tinman Go. We are starting with HELOCs, with plans to expand into non-QM and conventional mortgages, building out a full product suite for brokers in a one-stop shop where both HELOCs and mortgages are available in one unified platform powered by AI in the broker's pocket, rendering instant decisions for rates and eligibility in a way that no other platform in the industry does today. In addition, we are rebuilding momentum across our partnership pipeline. Four of the large partner opportunities that stalled under the prior board remain in sight, and we are moving discussions forward with each of them.

These opportunities are central to how we intend to scale, bringing Tinman to partners with established customer bases and growing our reach without a corresponding increase in customer acquisition spend through an embedded finance product that lets each of our partners expand into mortgage and HELOC and serve more of their customers with more products. In direct-to-consumer, we are optimizing for profitability rather than volume. That means lower customer acquisition spend, with $13.2 million in annualized CAC reductions already in place, better lead-to-lock and lock-to-fund conversion, and AI-enabled lead routing. Together, these initiatives give us more volume at a lower cost. Partner and wholesale growth adds revenue without adding proportional acquisition costs, and AI-driven conversion lets us grow revenue at our lower fixed cost base. That is how we scale. That is how we get to profitability.

Turning to recent activity, volume before the proxy contest started in July was $496 million. That volume, once the proxy contest started in August 3rd, was $464 million for the month of August, $435 million for the month of September, and $345 million for the month of October, where the real damage from the loss of productivity and work effort in August and September was felt in funded loan volume in October. We believe that the changes in the sales and operations team that we have implemented in the last week of October and this first week of November will dramatically turn this around. While we face seasonally light loan volumes for the months of November, December, and January, we will be able to still showcase productivity and growth because of the changes that we have made.

All of these initiatives will take time to ramp, but we believe they represent important building blocks for the business as we enter 2027 and seek a return to profitability and growth. We want to be transparent about both the headwinds we are facing and the progress we are making. We believe the operational changes underway, combined with our expanding partner and broker channels, 39 mortgage brokers signed since we've returned, multiple partners implemented and launched and signed, and many more to go, position us to improve performance and drive profitability and growth. We will continue to keep you all updated weekly with our scorecard reporting until we hit Adjusted EBITDA breakeven, so you can track our progress against our Better 2.0 goals.

We have a lot of work ahead, but we have a clear set of priorities: get to profitability, restore growth, bring costs down, and get Better 2.0 to sustainable growth and profitability. Better 2.0 is about executing with urgency and holding ourselves accountable for the results. You'll continue to hear directly from us about the progress we are making and where we need to do better. Thank you all for your continued support. With that, I'll turn the call over to Loveen.

Loveen Advani
CFO, Better Home & Finance

Thank you, Vishal. I will now provide more detail on the quarter. On the macro environment, in the third quarter, Freddie Mac reported the 30-year rate increased 10% over the quarter, resulting in industry volume declining 7% and the MBA Application Index declining 16.5% over the same period. Refinance activity remains challenged, which reinforces our focus on HELOCs as homeowners look to access equity without giving up the low rate they already have. Vishal covered our headline results, so I'll focus on the underlying drivers. Lower refinance activity, softer conversion, and the delays in key partnership launches weighed in on loan volume and revenue sequentially. At the same time, the Tinman platform continued to deliver strong year-over-year growth and represented an increased share of our business. Our net loss was $36.5 million, narrowing from the $39.1 million in the third quarter of 2025.

On Adjusted EBITDA, we had a loss of $29.7 million in Q3 2026 versus a loss of $22.9 million in Q3 2025. The $12.8 million of proxy-related expenses was the largest driver of the variance to our guidance. Excluding those, our Adjusted EBITDA loss would have been $16.9 million, within our guidance range of an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $15 million-$18 million. By product mix, purchase made up 55.6%, refinance made up 25.5%, and home equity made up 18.9% of Q3 loan volume. By channel, in Q3, 57% of loan volume, or $792 million, came from the Tinman AI platform, up 64% year-over-year, and 43% or $603 million came from D2C. As Vishal noted, monthly loan volume declined from $496 million in July, pre-proxy, to $345 million in October, post-proxy.

Operational disruption and market volatility continue to limit near-term visibility, reinforcing our focus on aligning costs with current production and improving productivity. As our new HELOC partnerships and brokerage relationships ramp, our priority is to translate that distribution into funded volume without rebuilding overhead. We will continue reporting progress through our weekly scorecards until we reach Adjusted EBITDA breakeven. Taking a look at our balance sheet, we ended Q3 2026 with $77.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and $12.9 million in restricted cash. We continue to make progress on the sale of Birmingham Bank. We expect the transaction to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approval, and to generate approximately $65 million of additional cash. The 10 million pounds in escrow that the buyer had placed is now converted to Tier 2 capital for the bank.

In the interim, we're evaluating borrowing against our unencumbered position in the bank and have received five term sheets to date. We'll continue to give you visibility into these numbers each quarter alongside our weekly scorecard and let the results speak for the progress we're making. I will now turn it back to the operator for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the two. Please, we do ask to ask one question following one follow-up. Your first question comes from Ramsey El-Assal from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Ramsey El-Assal
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Hi, Loveen, Vishal. How are you guys doing today? Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the path to breakeven and to get your thoughts on the sort of categories of expense reduction that you expect to realize as you kind of close in on the goal. I guess it's a roundabout way of asking about visibility. Was it headcount reduction is the first phase, and then you have to move into more operational efficiencies? How clear is the path to get to the 60? Thanks. 64. Thanks.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

I think the path is actually pretty clear. I think if you look at slide nine of our earnings deck, what you can see is what we control right now going into, since we came back, is what we spend money on. Because the platform is built, as you can tell, like 57% of revenue is coming from Tinman and AI platform, and therefore dependent on our partners, and then the lead volume from our partners, which of course, as you know, is dependent on the macro environment. So, we don't control that, but what we do control is how much energy, time, and expense we spend to turn that lead volume into revenue dollars.

And there, we've done a pretty strong job in the last 30 days since we've been back in taking the expense line, which was $75 million in Q3, and let's forget about Q3 for now because it had proxy expenses, but $68.7 million in Q2, and we've taken that down to what we believe is going to be about $46 million in Q4. And that's almost a reduction of 40%. And to take a company at scale and take their expense line down by 40% requires cuts in everything. So, we've become more efficient in marketing. We used to have two different marketing agencies. Those marketing agencies are gone now, and now we have our AI agents going and buying those ads and clicks and so on and so forth.

We have an AI creative that's taking creative that has already worked, and instead of coming back with three versions of the creative, coming back with hundreds and hundreds of versions of creative and adjusting it on the fly. So, that's marketing. In sales, we have eliminated the role of what was called the home lending associate, and that was a person that would go and reach out to customers, walk them through the application, and get them ready to then talk to a loan officer. That's being all done by Betsy now. A lot of the loan officer tasks, the follow-up tasks, are being done by Betsy. A lot of the coordination tasks are being done by Betsy. The underwriting reviews are increasingly being done by Betsy.

You are seeing, up and down the factory, we have just dramatically amped up the usage of Betsy since we got back and really taken a lot of the belts and suspenders and eye patches off, right, that we had in that context and really let it run. Lastly, in capital markets, the demand for some of our loan products has never been higher, right? The number of investors that are interested in buying mortgages that yield 7% or more or HELOCs that yield 9% or more in this market environment is quite large. Actually, the fact is that the mortgage industry is making less of them now because of consumer demand. So, us being able to hold our ground there has enabled us to start getting better pricing and develop a wider credit box.

Then in corporate, we have dramatically scaled back the fixed cost functions across every part of the organization and removed management layers. I would say that is the biggest thing that has taken place. We have gotten rid of your traditional VP, Director, Senior, Associate, Senior Managers, and it is now effectively like a C-level or EVP-level person working directly with the people who are hands-on keyboard. I think that that, again, is just a mindset change that is more akin to the type of mindset that a series B, series C company would have rather than a big public company. So, I would say that these cuts are pretty permanent.

Again, the most important part about that cut is to pass to break even, which is that if you think about where Q1 revenue was, that was $47 million, and Q4 OpEx at $46 million, there is a line of sight to profitability right there. Q2 revenue of $54.7 million versus OPEX of $46 million for Q4. If we get any kind of retrenchment back into anything that resembles that, you have clear break-even taking place.

Ramsey El-Assal
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

That is great. That is terrific color. Thank you. One quick follow-up from me. You called out the four partner opportunities that stalled during the proxy battle, and that you are kind of re-engaged there. Obviously, without naming names, what is the likelihood that you can get those guys back on side and rolled out?

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Yeah. We are very confident. We are very confident. I think with two of them, we have legal documents that are being exchanged. The other two, we are working on tech integrations.

Ramsey El-Assal
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Operator

Your next question comes from Kyle Peterson from Needham. Please go ahead.

Kyle Peterson
Analyst, Needham

Great. Good afternoon, and appreciate you taking our questions. I wanted to start particularly on the volume and the commentary. I think you mentioned that some of the damage from the past quarter was really felt in October, so a little bit of a slight delay there where the brunt of it was faced. I guess, how should we think about now that the team is back and everything seems to be trending in the right direction? What does the timeline look to get everyone on pace? Is that a faster ramp back up to full and possibly even greater productivity, or is there a similar lag where it will take a few months?

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

I think there is a bit of a lag, right? Because as we are ripping through different departments, right, to kind of like de-layer and focus our energies and efficiency on the absolute best people in those departments. I think you are going to see a bit of that U. I would say October, November are probably the bottom of the U, and then you start to see a rebuild towards volumes that reach like July, August type of volumes, and then beyond.

Loveen Advani
CFO, Better Home & Finance

This is Loveen. I think one of the points you got to stress on, we told the street we are going to get about $16 million or $64 million in annualized savings. If you look at slide nine, we plan to get $16 million of quarter-over-quarter savings in fourth quarter itself, right? That is the cadence of the company. We want to make sure we rightsize the business and then address the volume problems that we are currently facing.

Kyle Peterson
Analyst, Needham

Got it. Yeah, that is really helpful. Then, for my follow-up, I wanted to touch a bit on the HELOC expansion with your existing partner. That seems like a particularly good opportunity and pretty sizable, I guess. How fast does the ramp look like? Is that 100% turn the switch and it is on? Is it being rolled out in kind of cohorts? What does that kind of build out look like for you guys, and how should we think about how that volume should translate to the P&L here in the coming months, quarters?

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

I think you should look at the volumes that we did with them in October, November, December, Jan, Feb, March, and see the roll-up there, right? I think you can expect to see a similar like hockey stick. Yes, it is being rolled out to like a small percentage of their customer base, then a larger percentage of their customer base, and then a larger percentage of their customer base. So, that is how you should sort of see that, and that is exactly what happened last year as well. From October of 2025 to April of 2026, before we had the Iran conflict make a hiccup, I think you can expect a similar ramp on the HELOC product.

Kyle Peterson
Analyst, Needham

Okay. That is good to hear. Appreciate all the color, and welcome back.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Kartik Mehta from Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

Kartik Mehta
Analyst, Northcoast Research

Hey, Vishal and Loveen. Obviously, you have talked about the greater, excuse me, greater emphasis on HELOC. Loveen, I was wondering if you could talk about the gain on sale on HELOCs and how they are different than your traditional mortgages, and what you expect the trend to be on that gain on sale as we move forward.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Yeah, depending on who the investor is, the gain on sale can be 6-8 points on the HELOCs versus our traditional 2-3 points on the mortgages. The balances are smaller, but we basically end up making about the same amount of money in revenue on a HELOC as we do on a mortgage.

Kartik Mehta
Analyst, Northcoast Research

Obviously, that will help you as you try to get to that revenue that gets you to break even.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Yeah.

Kartik Mehta
Analyst, Northcoast Research

Vishal, you've, I think, now signed 39 wholesale brokers. I think represented by $400 million in potential annual loan volume. Can you just talk about how those brokers are doing today and what you anticipate their trend to be over the next, let's say, 12 months?

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

What I will tell you is each of those brokers had a preexisting solution. Of course, there are gaps in the preexisting solution, right? Some solutions have a wide credit box, but they take you 30 to 60 days to get a HELOC done. Other solutions have near-instant approval and funding very quickly, but it's red light, green light with no counteroffer, no decisioning other than what's within that criteria. I would say in the HELOC landscape, there's securitizers who are fast, have high rates, and no ability to save files, and therefore low approval rates. Then there's banks who are slow, have low rates, and tight credit boxes. Then there are non-QM buyers who are slow, have wide approval criteria, and high rates. Nobody has combined all three of these like we have on Tinman.

Across our 65 investors, 25 of whom we've added this year, we have coverage for all of those. We have a fast track for people who want their money instantly and want an easy process and are willing to use digital tools like Plaid. Then we have the, "Hey, I have 19 K-1s and I want to take out $750,000 in a HELOC on my $3 million house." Yeah, we have that solution too. I think that is the unique value proposition. We think as these brokers start to use that population, initially they're going to send us the stuff that doesn't get funded elsewhere, which is fine by us, because as you know, we don't hold any inventory. We're matching to the investor criteria and selling it on.

What we're hopeful is we're going to capture the bulk of the volume because they can come to us and in one system easily get decision for all of their customer demands rather than having to re-enter the application into two or three different systems. We think that there's a real opportunity for us to capture 80% of that $400 million.

Kartik Mehta
Analyst, Northcoast Research

Perfect. Thanks, Vishal. I appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Timothy D'Agostino from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Timothy D'Agostino
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Yeah. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess the first from my end, could you just maybe provide an update across different products and then just across the platform itself on the cost per loan and cost to originate? It would be great to hear any commentary how that is trending and maybe how we should think about that going forward. Thank you.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

The cost to make a loan is going to be coming down pretty dramatically. I mean, all the delayering that we have done in the org, that is going to help. On the customer acquisition cost, I think you should expect it to stay kind of where it was, because when the demand for HELOCs and for mortgages has sort of come down because of the rate environment, some of the other players are bidding up to get that marginal demand so they can keep their factories afloat. While we are getting more efficient, we are at least able to keep investing in CAC. That being said, we have dramatically reduced our spend in the last 30 days just to reassess where we think demand is that is profitable inside D2C, right?

Obviously, you are going to continue to see our customer acquisition costs in the broker channel and our partner channel is on funded loans, so it is okay. On D2C, we have substantially scaled down marketing spend so that we can create learning data just about what works organically and what works in the best channels and through retargeting for our existing customer base, then go back from there. Another thing is, we to date had not really monetized our existing 5 million + customers. What we have done, there were sporadic attempts, but it was very loan officer based. What we now have done is Betsy is actively mining that customer list in a way that no loan officer could, and seeing all the triggers and reaching out to consumers on a regular basis.

We've just started that, and we're doing it about 5,000 a day, but we've got 5 million of them. I think that's a very significant competitive advantage, because unlike other customer lists, all 5 million of those people are homeowners. It's a very significant portion of the American homeownership public that is also borrowing against their homes. We have some pretty high hopes for that.

Timothy D'Agostino
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Okay. Just going off the October 14th release here, you had mentioned that the goal is to reduce total cost to originate mortgage below $1,000 per loan, and then to produce a HELOC below $500. That's still the goal. I mean, can you provide kind of a timeline on that?

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Yeah, I think early 2027.

Timothy D'Agostino
Analyst, B. Riley Securities

Okay, great. Thank you so much for taking questions.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Owen Rickert from Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Owen Rickert
Analyst, Northland Capital Markets

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question here. You recently had two announcements. You brought on some large producer teams through NEO. I was just curious, what is the cost structure and payback timeline on recruiting these teams, and maybe how does that recruiting spend square with the broader cost-cutting narrative?

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Those teams join us. We do not have upfronts. We do not do any of that stuff that other people do. Those teams join us to move from one platform to another and to make more money, because we are the only platform in retail where you can demonstrate with proof to someone that you are going to do twice as many loans, make way more money, and have way lower costs. There are all these platforms in retail that are running around recruiting loan officers, paying upfronts, giving people bonuses, signing bonuses equivalent to two years or four years of production. We do not do that right now.

These teams are being recruited because they are leaving their existing platform that they are worried about, and where the technology is so antiquated, they have been telling, "Hey, hey, what is going on?" They have had the same platform for 25 years, and they just see people that we are moving forward.

Loveen Advani
CFO, Better Home & Finance

We also see about 2X the loan officers coming on, the retail officers coming on our platform, see a 2X improvement in efficiency being part of our platform. That's a kind of reason for them to come on board.

Owen Rickert
Analyst, Northland Capital Markets

Got it. Thanks, guys. Super helpful.

Operator

Thank you. Your last question comes from Joseph Vafi from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Will Johnston
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Hey, this is Will Johnston on for Joe. Thanks for taking my question. It's been several months since the Tinman launch and ChatGPT. Just wanted to see if you could give us an update on adoption there and maybe how much that's contributed to volume at this point, and then any comments on the OpenAI partnership broadly and how it's progressing would be great. Thanks.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Yeah, I think we continue to invest in that partnership, and we continue to have various tools leverage the platform. What we built and demoed inside ChatGPT is now actually integrated into our Tinman Go platform that we're launching. We are super bullish and continue to have very, very strong positive interactions with ChatGPT and with OpenAI in general.

Will Johnston
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference call back over to the management team.

Vishal Garg
Founder and Head of Product, Platform, and Innovation, Better Home & Finance

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We are in the first month of Better 2.0. As you can see, we have already made a tremendous amount of progress. We are super excited to continue this journey. As you know, every Tuesday, you are going to be getting a report card from us. You do not have to wait till the next earnings call to figure out what is happening with your company. This is our company, your company. Without you, we would not be here in this room today, and we are going to continue to be very transparent, update you as we transform this company into the $100 billion platform for home finance that we know it can be with the power of AI. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for today. We thank you very much for your participation, and you may now disconnect. Have a great day, everyone.