Tony M.
Good financial terms/lackluster service
I contacted them a few weeks ago. For the most part, I think they mean well. I get the impression that they're a new company and that they're very short-staffed. The pros and cons: Pros: 1) The initial application is very simple. 2) The website is nicely designed and easy to navigate. 3) They offer long payback terms for smaller loans which is hard to find in today's market. 4) They offer great interest rates if you have good credit. 5) The employees are very professional and friendly (but see cons below). Cons: 1) Communication and responsiveness are lacking. This isn't the type of company that you can call if you have a question. You can leave voicemails and send emails but don't expect same-day responses. Sometimes it can take more than 2 days for a response. 2) From what I understand, RenoFi doesn't provide funding. They work with financial institutions who they sell your loan to. The one that they told us to apply with, had extremely poor reviews--an average of 1.5 stars. That credit union did not reply to a single negative review and some were very credible and very bad. For example, many of them said that credit union is very slow to post payments, and then they charge late fees. We asked if there was an alternate institution we could use, and in our case, there was. 3) Information was sometimes unreliable or missing. For example, before we switched institutions, they didn't tell us the new one had stricter requirements like needing a full estimate for the project. It took a couple of weeks to finalize that as we were trying to get bids. That's an unusual request for a personal loan such as ours. Per #1 above, there was a lot of time and back and forth to get answers on that. 4) It takes a long time to get funded. With us, it's been 3 weeks and we're still not there yet. So, if you're the type of person that likes to get information quickly, either over the phone or via email, get correct, complete information upfront, and if you want a simple smooth process to close your loan, this may not be the company for you. If you're willing to be patient, can do your own research and wade through the issues above, the financial terms may make it worth your effort.
Response from RenoFiApr 11, 2023
Tony, thank you for the thoughtful review. Much of your criticism was fair and we've worked incredibly hard to address each of these areas to improve the homeowner experience when using a RenoFi Loan to fund their renovation. I am happy to report over the past 6 months we've made significant improvements and should you ever have a need to finance a renovation again, I am confident you'll be delighted with the experience from start to finish. We hope your renovation turned out to be a major success!