The national recruiting home of Fairway Home Mortgage
National Strength. Hometown Service.
Fairway was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1996 and grew into the #2 retail lender in America — without outgrowing the way a hometown lender treats people. Big-platform strength. Small-town service. Built to back the originator. Never to replace you.
Nobody will know you're looking. That's the whole point.
Holly leads Fairway’s national recruiting effort with three decades in the business. Her promise to every candidate: confidential conversations, zero pressure, and an honest look at whether Fairway is your fit.
The thesis
Hometown service. In every department.
In a small town, service isn’t a strategy — it’s how you keep your name. Fairway grew up that way in Madison, Wisconsin, wrote speed to respond and committed to serve into its official core values, then scaled that standard to all 50 states without watering it down.
Fairway Advantage® pre-approvals are fully underwritten before your borrower shops — so offers move at cash speed, and listing agents call you back first.
An ops machine tuned for turn time — files move because the whole pipeline is built to keep them moving, not to queue them.
Landing pages, campaigns, and branded reports in days — sometimes minutes — not quarters. Compliance pre-flight included, so speed never costs you risk.
FairwayLeads are engaged the moment they arrive — text, email, and phone — and Brianna, the AI assistant, moves conversations forward while you close.
Switching companies is where momentum goes to die — so Fairway engineered onboarding to protect your pipeline and get you back to funding fast.
When Texas flooded, Fairway committed $1,000,000 within days — then publicly challenged the industry to keep up. That’s the hometown reflex at national scale: when a neighbor’s in trouble, you show up first.
Where this all started
Born in Madison, Wisconsin. Still runs on Wisconsin.
In April 1996, Steve Jacobson opened Fairway’s doors in Madison — with a name suggested by his childhood best friend, Randy Cross. Thirty years later, the headquarters is still there, the company is being sold back to its own employees, and the service standard is still the one you learn in a small town: answer fast, know their name, show up when it matters.
Steve Jacobson founds Fairway in April 1996 — named by his childhood best friend, Randy Cross, forever a member of the Fairway family.
Fairway hit $1 billion in annual fundings within five years of opening. Hometown standards, scaling fast.
The ESOP launches — and today Fairway is being sold back to the Fairway team. The people who built it, own it.
The #2 retail mortgage lender in America — with headquarters still in Madison, WI.
The strength side of the promise
National strength — pointed at your hometown.
Fairway brings the muscle of a top-two national lender — partnerships with both Anthropic and OpenAI, a proprietary AI layer, a full in-house marketing engine — and aims every bit of it at one thing: helping you serve your own community better. The promise still holds: AI won’t replace loan officers — loan officers with AI will replace loan officers without it. Big-company strength. Hometown-sized service. Same you.
The stack is the engine. She teaches you to drive it.
Learn to scale from Ashley Caronna.
National Business Development & Social Media Manager
Ashley teaches the classes loan officers and Realtors actually use — personal branding, social media, video, and business development — turnkey curriculum you can take straight into your market. Her thesis: the top communicator wins, and personal brand is market share.
“It’s not just inspiration — it’s practical guidance designed to help you grow your brand, build meaningful relationships, and move your business forward in a way that feels authentic and effective.” — Ashley Caronna, Fairway press release, 2025
Build a presence that reflects your market and your voice — clarity and consistency over follower counts.
Scripts, hooks, and compliant frameworks that make showing up on camera straightforward.
Turnkey classes you offer your real estate partners — you show up as the expert, the curriculum is done for you.
Turning content into conversations, and conversations into a referral network that compounds.
Hear it straight
The story — and why originators keep making the move
Marketing muscle, hometown voice
Your brand, shipped in days — not quarters
Most originators are their own unpaid marketing department, moving at nights-and-weekends pace. At Fairway, marketing is infrastructure — creative, compliant, always on, and fast.
A real marketing department
In-house creative — design, social, events, campaign calendars — that keeps your brand alive without you lifting a finger.
Your personal brand, productized
Sites, landing pages, listing launches, co-branded pieces — compliance-checked before anything ships.
Content that compounds
Video, social, and education content built around you — so borrowers and agents already know you before the first call.
Compliance as a feature
Marketing pre-flight checks catch disclosure issues before they ship — you get speed without the risk.
Go deeper
Explore what you'd be joining
The operating system
Ten core values. Written by employees, not consultants.
Fairway's values were crafted with employee input — what the team itself said mattered. They decide internal awards, they shape hiring, #3 is official policy — and #8, committed to serve, is the reason this entire site is about service.
Core value #3
Have fun. We're serious about it.
Fairway's ten core values were written with employee input — and the third one, in a multi-billion-dollar mortgage company's official value system, is have fun. So we built an arcade game into our recruiting site. Naturally.
Who you'd really be joining
Loans are what we do. Not who we are.
Service here isn't just a department. Fairway runs two nonprofits and moves first when disaster strikes — $1M committed within days, twice — then publicly challenges the rest of the industry to match its heart.
American Warrior Initiative
Bridging the military–civilian divide through service dogs, ambassador programs, and community education — with every expense underwritten by Fairway, so donated dollars go to the mission.
- Service dogs placed450+
- Expenses covered byFairway
- Milestone400th dog, 2025
Fairway Cares
Hope, encouragement, and relief for those facing critical illness, trauma, or loss — care packages with handwritten notes, and financial grants when they're needed most.
- Care packages sent15,000+
- Every one includesA handwritten note
- Financial grants2,000+
Your two people
Meet Holly and Julie
One conversation each. Zero pressure from either.
Holly Mattson
President of Recruiting
Holly leads Fairway’s national recruiting effort with three decades in the business. Her promise to every candidate: confidential conversations, zero pressure, and an honest look at whether Fairway is your fit.
Julie Fry
Chief People & Engagement Officer
Julie owns the people side of Fairway — the culture behind six consecutive USA TODAY Top Workplaces awards, judged entirely on confidential employee feedback.
“To be named a Top Workplace for six consecutive years speaks to Fairway’s leadership, our mindset, and the empowerment of our staff.” — PR Newswire, April 2026
100% confidential — always
Ready for an honest conversation?
No pressure. No spam list. Nobody finds out you asked. Talk to Holly confidentially, or slip quietly into a Virtual Fairway Day and just watch.