“I Couldn’t Afford to Stay Silent Anymore”

When Bri Lees finally summoned the courage to post her essay on how women are treated in mortgage, her hands were shaking. It had been a full year agonizing over whether she should say anything. 

“I've been in the industry long enough to understand how it works, and I know what happens to women who say certain things, and I watched it happen to women before me,” Lees said. “What changed is that I just got really tired of it.”

Lees recently attended a conference & grew frustrated by what she saw. “When you're at trade shows, you always experience things, and I just got tired of watching. Then I realized it's Women's History Month, and I see all these performative posts from brands and businesses that are just like, ‘Let's throw the color pink on it,’ and let's say, ‘Go women,’ and never talk about women again… I was so nervous that I almost thought about taking it down, but what I wanted to say and what I needed to say matters more than my anxiety around the situation. I just decided that I couldn't afford to stay silent on it anymore.”

I spoke to Lees on Thursday about why she published it & what’s happened in the days since.

And just for paid subscribers: We have analysis on CrossCountry Mortgage’s winning bid of Two Harbors & UWM’s options are moving forward. Plus, what the ongoing war in Iran means for mortgage rates & the spring home-buying season.

(🙏 If you like what you’re reading, tell a fellow mortgage junkie to sign up here.)

In her essay, Lees describes a terrifying incident where a recruit cornered her alone in a supply closet. She reported it to leadership. They were concerned, but not concerned enough to take decisive action. 

“This is not a story about a bad industry. It is a story about an ordinary one,” she wrote.

I asked Lees: Could this essay potentially usher in a #MeToo-like movement that never really hit mortgage?

“I'll let the industry decide what this is,” she replied. “I don't know if this is a Me Too moment, but based on the response I've gotten, I know it's a pretty ordinary moment. And that's the whole point of how common this is. Maybe the Me Too movement exposed a pattern that we don't want to admit exists in mortgage, and it's just another Tuesday? 

She continued: “Whether this becomes a moment depends on what the men who read the piece are willing to do about it tomorrow. It is not whether they comment on it and be like, ‘You're so brave,’ or you're so you know, ‘I can't believe this happened. I'm so sorry.’ What matters and how this becomes a movement is what we do next, and whether it costs [bad actors] something. I think that's something that the industry has never had happen at this scale. And hopefully it starts now.”

Lees said that over 200,000 people have read the post & essay. She’s received messages from women across the industry detailing their own experiences.

“This is a leadership failure, not a culture problem,” she said. “Culture is what leadership tolerates. And every man who's still on stage and keynoting and doing all these things after he's maybe done something to someone he shouldn't have—somebody made a choice to continue to make that happen. And so that isn't going to just change with this conversation or whatever is published. It changes when somebody decides to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘This cost you something for your actions.’”

I’ll be publishing additional stories detailing the experiences of women in mortgage over the coming weeks. If you’d like to share, you can reach out to me at [email protected]. I also have a tip line.

Please read Lees’s essay in full. It’s a tough read, but it’s very thoughtful & has started a conversation that the industry needs to have.

“Veni, vidi, vici. - Julius Caesar.” - Ron Leonhardt

Mat Ishbia had by 11:59 a.m. Wednesday to top CrossCountry Mortgage’s unsolicited $10.70 a share cash offer for Two Harbors. The wholesale king came up short. In the end, the servicer opted for CCM’s also-improved $10.80 a share bid. Based on the comment UWM sent me, I think this one is headed for court 👇