Own your book.
Keep more of it.
Eureka Mortgage Planning is an independent brokerage licensed in ten states. We built it so originators can place more types of deals, keep more of what they earn, and get a real answer from a real decision-maker the same day they ask for one.
The broker model, without the trade-offs you were warned about.
Most originators who call us aren’t unhappy. They’ve run into the edges of what their shop can do. Edges on what they’re allowed to place, on what they take home, and on how long it takes anyone above them to say yes. Here’s the honest version of what changes.
If you’re already producing
- You bring your pipeline and your partner relationships, and they stay yours, in writing.
- Deals your current shop can’t place get routed to a lender that can, across 25+ investors and eleven product paths.
- Your comp is negotiated with you directly and confirmed in writing at offer, not handed down from a corporate grid.
If you’re newly licensed
- You learn on eleven product types from the start, not one lender’s overlay sheet.
- One-to-one coaching from leadership with 80+ years of combined experience, not a ticket queue.
- Licensing guidance, CE assistance, marketing, and brand are provided, not billed back to you.
We’re a small independent shop, not a national platform, and nobody here hands you a captive lead pipeline every morning. What we do is back lead-generation activity that fits how you actually build business, and we’d rather work that out with you in the first conversation than the fourth.
| Founded | 2022. Client-first and independent, with 80+ years of combined leadership experience. |
| Model | Independent mortgage brokerage. We shop wholesale lenders on the borrower’s behalf rather than selling one rate sheet. Collaborative culture, speed and service, community first. |
| Licensed states | Ten: CA, OR, WA, ID, AZ, TX, FL, NM, NV, TN. Branches in CA, OR, AZ, NV. A borrower relocating across state lines is still yours. |
| Product paths | Eleven: Conventional, FHA, VA, USDA, Jumbo, Non-QM, Reverse, Home Equity and second mortgages, Land, New Construction, and Private Money. |
| Lender panel | More than 25 approved wholesale investors, expanded as files require. |
Most of what you’ve heard about brokers is a decade out of date.
We hear these in almost every first conversation, usually from good originators repeating what a retail sales manager told them. Here’s the current version.
| What you’ve heard | What’s actually true |
|---|---|
| “You can’t talk to an underwriter.” | You call the underwriter on your file: a name and a number, not a portal ticket. Your AE escalates when a file needs it, and answers, because your business is portable. |
| “You can’t get pricing exceptions.” | You get them per file, from lenders competing for it. UWM’s Control Your Price gives the originator 125 basis points a quarter to deploy, up to 40 on a single loan. A retail exception climbs a corporate ladder and usually dies partway up. And because we can structure a file lender-paid or borrower-paid, there’s a flexibility in how a deal gets priced that a retail rate sheet simply doesn’t have. |
| “Brokers close slower.” | Simply put, this is false. Our files consistently close in under 30 days. You pick the lender by that week’s turn times, and if one stalls mid-process the file can be re-brokered. A retail desk has one pipeline and lives with whatever shape it’s in this month. |
| “There are fewer loan products.” | Eleven paths across more than 25 investors. When a scenario calls for a product we don’t have, we add an investor for it. No layers of management with no incentive to approve a product they don’t get paid on. Overlays kill retail files far more often than agency guidelines do. |
| “There’s no scenario desk.” | The whole team is the desk. Tough scenarios go into shared channels where originators, processing, and leadership weigh in the same day. We keep office space and open lines between teams for exactly this, so a file that stalls with one person gets another set of eyes, and a loan that doesn’t fit one investor finds its home with another. |
| “The technology is duct tape.” | Arive end to end, with a point-of-sale portal where you and your borrower exchange documents securely and e-sign without leaving it. Price a scenario, build a quote, and run DO and LPA on one screen, so product selection gets easier, not harder. Add a CRM that integrates with Arive directly, so your database works the pipeline with you. Disclosures and closing documents are issued by the lender under their compliance. |
| “You lose the client once the loan is sold.” | Retail sells servicing too; the difference is what you find out. Many lenders on our panel notify us when a payoff is requested on a loan you originated, so you hear your borrower is shopping while you can still call them. Retail originators usually learn after someone else closed it. |
| “You don’t have in-house processing.” | We do. Eureka permits contract processing if that’s how you work, and we also run an in-house processing team that knows our approved investor list and workflows. |
| “You’ll be working out of your kitchen, on your own equipment.” | We keep office space for the work that’s better done together, and equipment is provided. Come in when collaboration helps, work from home when focus does. Your leadership team is one video call away. |
| “Broker comp is the wild west.” | The same Loan Originator Compensation Rule governs both channels. Your split is set in writing, it’s consistent on every file, lender-paid or borrower-paid, and it never varies by loan terms. You always know what you’re going to be paid before the file is even opened. |
The comp conversation, up front.
Most recruiting conversations save this for the last page. We’d rather you can do the math before you spend another hour on us.
| Your split | Negotiated with you individually and set in writing before you start. Whatever we agree to holds on every file. The split is identical whether the compensation is lender-paid or borrower-paid, so how a deal is structured never changes what you earn. |
| Classification | W-2, always. Page 5 explains why we made that choice and what it’s worth to you. |
| Comp plan basis | A written compensation agreement compliant with the Loan Originator Compensation Rule, never varied by loan terms, and never by product type. |
| Commission payout | Closings from the 26th of the prior month through the 10th are paid on the 15th. Closings from the 11th through the 25th are paid at the end of that month. The goal is fast turnaround, twice a month, every month. |
| Per-file fees | None required. |
What Eureka covers
- Company NMLS sponsorship, licensing guidance, and CE assistance.
- E&O coverage, workers’ comp, and the compliance management system.
- Arive LOS and point-of-sale, integrated CRM, pricing engine, marketing automation, and credit reports.
- Brand system, marketing templates, and co-branded partner materials.
What you cover
- Your individual state licensing and NMLS renewals.
- Discretionary spend on your own lead sources and client events.
- Anything custom that falls outside the standard marketing suite.
- That’s the list. No desk fee, no per-file fee, no marketing bill.
Send your last twelve months of funded volume. We’ll rebuild it against this structure and show what the identical production would have paid here, benefits value included, not just the split. No projection, no best case. Your files, our math.
Why we’re a W-2 brokerage.
Plenty of shops hand you a 1099 and call it independence. We chose the W-2 model because it protects originators financially, legally, and over the length of a career. Here’s how the two actually stack up.
What you absorb as a contractor
- The full self-employment tax burden, 15.3%, out of your side.
- No employer-paid health, dental, or 401(k).
- Quarterly estimates and tax filing complications every year.
- Higher audit risk and personal liability exposure.
- Income uncertainty with no safety net underneath it.
- Out-of-pocket costs for E&O, technology, credit reports, and tools.
Protection and stability, built in
- Employer-paid taxes and withholdings handled for you.
- Health, dental, vision, and a 401(k) with match.
- Workers’ compensation and E&O coverage included.
- LOS, point-of-sale, pricing engine, and credit reports provided.
- Licensing guidance, CE assistance, and NMLS sponsorship.
- Compliance supported at the firm level, not from your desk.
- Hybrid options and a lighter administrative load.
Employer-side payroll taxes, benefits, E&O, technology, credit reports, and coverage aren’t small line items. They’re real money that comes off a 1099 split before you’ve kept a dollar of it. When you compare an offer here against a contractor split somewhere else, compare the net. We’ll do that math with you honestly, even when it’s close.
Benefit eligibility, waiting periods, plan details, and employer contribution levels are provided in writing at offer and are subject to plan terms. This page is a general description, not a summary plan document, and is not tax advice. Consult your own tax professional about your situation.
Eleven paths, not one.
The biggest difference between a retail desk and this desk is what happens when the first answer is no. Here, a decline is a routing decision, not the end of the file.
Conventional
Agency and Conventional 97 for files that still need sharp pricing.
FHA
3.5% down and flexible credit, and the first-time-buyer volume that follows.
VA
0% down, IRRRL refinances, and real funding-fee literacy.
USDA
Rural eligibility, a real market in ID, NM, TN, and inland CA.
Jumbo
High-balance financing where retail overlays turn good borrowers away.
Non-QM
Bank statement and P&L qualifying for self-employed and 1099 borrowers.
Reverse
HECM and proprietary options for the 62+ conversations most desks skip.
Home Equity & Seconds
HELOC, HELOAN, closed-end, piggyback, and standalone seconds.
Land
Lot and land financing for buyers who found the site before the house.
New Construction
Construction and construction-to-permanent structures.
Private Money
Business-purpose, bridge, and fast-close scenarios through vetted private capital relationships. This is the path that saves the deal conventional guidelines were never going to fit, and the one most retail originators simply have to walk away from.
Team support, not a ticket queue
- Send a tough scenario and get a read from the team. Leadership is reachable directly.
- Structure help on the file before it goes out, not after a decline comes back.
- New investor relationships opened when a recurring scenario justifies it.
In-house processing
- Dedicated processors who already know our approved investors and their workflows.
- Better visibility on every file, which means fewer late surprises for you and your agent.
- Contract processing is permitted too, if that’s how your team already runs.
You originate. We handle the brand.
Most originators lose hours every week rebuilding flyers, chasing compliance sign-off, and apologizing for materials that look like everyone else’s. That work is already done here.
Ready the day you start
- A complete brand system in navy, gold, and sage, with templates for flyers, decks, and letterhead.
- Your own bio page and review page on eurekamortgage.net, with your NMLS block and booking link.
- Loan-type flyers and social content already built. You send them, you don’t design them.
For your referral partners
- Co-branded open-house flyers and pre-approval letters, equal weight, never subordinate.
- Deal-specific talking-point PDFs you can hand an agent before they call their client.
- Quarterly Lunch & Learn material, built to earn CE credit where the state allows it.
Six tools we built into the website. Send the link, skip the email.
- Mortgage payment calculator: run real numbers while a borrower is still on the phone, instead of promising to email a scenario tonight.
- Affordability calculator: the “how much house can I afford” answer, delivered on your site instead of a competitor’s.
- Rent vs. buy: the comparison that moves a hesitant renter into a pre-approval conversation.
- Early payoff calculator: show what one extra principal payment a year actually saves them.
- Refinance break-even: the months-to-recoup answer, before they think to ask for it.
- Impound & prepaid estimator: state-by-state prepaid interest, tax impound months, and insurance reserves, so cash to close isn’t a surprise when the Loan Estimate lands.
- Plus an 84-term glossary written to explain every term twice, and every page and template ships with the licensing and disclosure block already set.
Your book
Your clients and your past-client database are yours. If it ever stops working, you leave with them.
Your partners
Your agents and referral sources are your relationships. We never pitch them a competing service.
Your calendar
No mandatory floor time, no call quotas, no sales meeting theater. Close files your way.
Why experienced originators chose Eureka.
Every page before this one is our case. This one is theirs: originators and managers who made the move, in their own words.
The goal has always been broker pricing with retail support. Most broker shops don’t provide the sales, processing, or marketing support that retail mortgage banks offer. Eureka is different. There aren’t multiple levels of management needed for approval, just a streamlined, horizontal process.
Eureka combines the pricing advantages of a broker model with the structured operational support of a traditional retail IMB. Efficient internal processing paired with preferred wholesale relationships gives us direct control over the loan lifecycle.
After more than 35 years in this business, I chose Eureka because the people and the model matched how I actually want to work. I get a team that answers the phone, a leadership group I trust, and a setup that lets me focus on complex files and the people behind them.
As an experienced originator, I appreciate the trust in my ability to manage transactions with less oversight than retail and many broker shops. I can take a file from application through funding, use an approved contract processor, or use in-company processing. That flexibility matters.
I wanted the freedom and resources to truly do what’s best for my clients, while still having a team behind me that genuinely wants me to succeed. The support, culture, and access to a wide range of products have let me grow my business without feeling like I’m doing it alone.
What I value most is the supportive team and shared commitment to doing right by the customer. From the processing team to the top of the sales team and operations, support has been consistently responsive.
Four steps. Producing in 48 hours.
Changing sponsorship is more paperwork than drama. State approval sets the pace, but once it clears, onboarding completes in 24 to 48 hours.
One honest conversation
Thirty minutes with leadership to align on goals, fit, and growth. You tell us what’s limiting you; we tell you whether we can actually fix it. If we can’t, we’ll say so.
Your production, our math
Send your resume and production history. We rebuild twelve months of funded volume against our structure and show you the net, benefits included.
License check and sponsorship transfer
We verify NMLS status, file the sponsorship request, and check your individual license and education standing in every state you want to originate in. Gaps get flagged up front, not after you resign. This step is the variable. Approval timing sits with the state, not with us.
Offer, onboard, first file
Onboarding completes within 24 to 48 hours of sponsorship approval. Systems access, your bio page, and your marketing set go live together, so the day you’re approved is effectively the week you’re producing.
Producing teams move together. Your processors, assistants, and coordinators come with you, and we plan the move around the whole group: sponsorship for the originators, roles for the ops staff, one timeline. Tell us in the first conversation.
Send your last twelve months of funded volume.
We’ll rebuild it against our structure and walk you through the numbers, benefits and fees included, by the next business day. If it isn’t meaningfully better than what you have, we’ll tell you that, and you’ll have spent one conversation finding out. See the platform in detail at eurekamortgage.net/platform.