Real RenoFi Reviews
4.7 rating out of 630 reviews
dvezia
Renofi is great, almost too good to be true! The Pros: Great first intro to the program, professional, extremely straightforward process. The Cons: Took significantly longer than expected to close, mainly due to the appraisal process taking so long. I had to call a few times because I had not heard anything back after weeks and weeks of ordering the appraisal. But when I called the team made sure to follow up. But the appraisal process in general was the most unclear and slowest part of the whole thing. All in all I'm so glad I found them! What a great service they offer!!!
Jacob Thomas
RenoFi was easy to work with and their review of the contractor made me feel safer about the price quotes I had gotten for my project.
Mike Wang
On the whole, a positive experience. Short of five stars. however, because when the handoff was made to the underwriting bank, some of the attractive details turned out to be inaccurate or just flat untrue. Still net positive insofar as they are really the only company that does what they do, but the inaccuracies at the end left a less than great taste in my mouth.
Brett Peterson
Helped me get a home equity loan for renovation where I was struggling to otherwise. Great experience, except I had to follow up with them several times to keep the ball rolling.
John Parrotte
To echo another reviewer, this is a unique loan product, and potentially a 6 out of 5 (yes, you read that correctly). It’s a HELOC based on the your after renovation value but is granted before the work starts. You receive all of the funds yourself as the customer. We just recently received the funding for the loan and work will start as soon as permits are approved, and we are thankful we didn’t have to refinance and go through the regular process of a normal lender managing the payouts.
The only slight negative, and the reason for the current 4 stars instead of 5, and in agreement with a previous reviewer, this process took quite a bit longer than advertised. This is likely partially due to COVID-related market conditions. We basically had to go through what seems like a full underwriting process first with RenoFi, and then you get transferred to the actual bank who then runs another full underwriting process. While this is of course covering their risk and is understandable, the pre-process advertising promotes a much quicker turnaround. If RenoFi were clearer about the expectations then I don’t think customers would be hesitant to use this product, because so far it is great.
Otherwise, RenoFi reps have been very responsive to questions. As of now I can recommend RenoFi and hope the entire build process goes smoothly (which RenoFi themselves have nothing to do with). Supposedly, when work is completed, RenoFi will send an appraiser again to overview the final product. We will see how that goes and I will possibly readjust the 4-star review (up or down) based on that experience.
So far, RenoFi has delivered on what they advertise!
Ryan Johnston
I find it hard to rate this business because it's wonderful product was invaluable to my renovation success. There's simply nothing really like this product on the market and that's why it's rating is so high in my opinion. The other coin, this process took wayy longer than I anticipated. I was told upfront that it was going to take 45 days from the start. It wound up taking around 9 weeks (63 days) and while that might only seem like 18 days, that 18 days was crucial. It adjusted my entire renovation plan, schedule and it also messed with my contractor's schedule. I was paying for a renovation out of pocket because I planned on receiving money that I didn't receive. Communication was lacking and there was never a sense of urgency or transparency in the whole process. So bottom line, while the product itself is unique and wonderful, the execution needs dire work. I will need a similar product in the future and I really hope they fix their process or I'll be taking my business elsewhere.
Melissa Embry
Working with Rich and the RenoFi team was great. Rich was knowledgeable, friendly, communicated the product and knew our area so was helpful in the process. Thanks for your help RenoFi.
Kevin Gettings
The software would not let me edit.
Justin Robinson
Incredibly hard to work with but we did get our renovation loan
John Tang
Friendly, but underestimated our closing fees by $870. What was missing in the original estimate was any title and county recorder fees. They can add up, so watch out and do your due diligence.
SW B
Still in progress and disappointed that it is taking so long. I have been working with Renofi for over six months now. Slow communication and dropped follow-up has made the process more difficult than it should be. They have a great product, so I hope they can fix this. There have been countless excruciatingly slow response patterns. The latest is a lack of follow-up on final submission of documents for closing. We received conditional approval over two weeks ago and immediately submitted all required documents. We were expecting a swift follow up with confirmation and closing schedule. Instead we have written 5 follow up emails and still not received a clear update. We are hopeful this process will be resolved soon and we can update our review accordingly. Everyone at Renofi is kind and helpful but if they can’t close a loan or communicate about it they are not delivering. Since they are not responding to repeated emails and don’t answer phones — I am hopefully they will respond to this and I can update with a happy resolution. Until then I recommend proceeding with caution.
Update: we were eventually able to get this closed and everything has worked out fine. It was a lot harder than it should have been but eventually we got the help we needed. Updating from 2-3 stars.
Jack Vogel
They helped us finance the job, but the fees definitely pile up and the way they land on rates is pretty confusing (i.e. we got a higher rate because the appraisal for our post-construction home came in higher than expected.
Kelley Drummond
The beginning process was easy and went great, Josh Kelley was communicative and attentive to our needs, the end was a little tougher with the senior processing agent. The portal is easy to use and let's you know where you are in the process.
Tony Maietta
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.
Sabrina Miller
I found RenoFi when I was frantically searching to find out how to fund our home renovation after we found out a typical HELOC wasn't going to meet our needs. I'm giving RenoFi three stars, not because the product isn't of quality, but that I feel there are areas that need to be improved.
The first is communication during the process. Often there were times that I was left wondering if the company was really "real" because I'd have conversations or exchange emails and then there would be silence for awhile. I was asking for a lot of money, so it was not easy for me to just accept "everything is fine" responses. I needed more reassurance, especially with dealing with such a new product.
The second is marketing. Renofi needs to get their name out. And I understand that's probably one of the goals. Several financial/mortgage people we talked to have never even heard of Renofi or the type of loan. This was really unsettling to hear when we weren't always getting timely responses. There's also very little information about Renofi out there, even the financial company we're working with has nothing about Renofi's product on their website.
The third is communication after being paired with a lender. I never heard anything. The only email I received was to give feedback. There's been no follow up asking if we're happy with the product, how our project is going, etc.
So overall, if you need a service that matches you with a lender that will give you a HELOC based on the post reno value of your home, use Renofi, but don't expect anything else and keep mind they are new and likely still working out some kinks.
Erin Langenstein
UPDATE: This company has been VERY frustrating to deal with. The loan itself doubled in interest rate to over 10%, in one month it jumped 2.5%, I was charged $149/month fee and when I finally got myself out of this toxic loan, they kept charging me the $149/month fee and refuse to refund it. I would suggest to use any other loan besides these guys, its just not worth the headaches.
I was happy in that I could get a high risk HELOC that was 125% my homes worth and I couldnt get that anywhere else but communication was a little confusing in that the portal didn’t always match what the associates said and rates can increase dramatically based on credit pull. I was quoted 4.25% with 780 and ended with 5.75% when it was pulled at 750. There is also an additional fee every month around $150 and the entire process takes about 2 months. That being said, if you don't have a ton of equity in your home, this is a good option.
J E
Was approved for the loan which isn’t the issue, I was told what my rate was, everything was all good and agreed upon. Then for whatever reason it was taking longer then expected for paperwork to come through and sign. The communication was great at first the agent I was in contact with over the phone was helping as much as she could along the way then was passed to another associate through email she was very forgetful, and in my opinion wasn’t doing her job plain and simple. when I didn’t hear anything in over a week I was done with the company didn’t want to continue. So another agent got involved smoothed over the situation and was back on track to complete the loan docs. I looked over the loan doc my payment was higher then expected or at least what I was told I confronted the person who was bad at her job which she had nothing to say except that’s what the bank is offering, and when I replied to her email saying the contract is wrong and someone needs to go over the contract again she ghosted me lmao haven’t heard from her in over a week I didn’t sign the contract and the deal fell through I’m not mad I don’t need the loan I can do whatever I need to do on my own! It just amazes me how some people are! they have one job! And unfortunately other nice people that actually helped get thrown under the bus as well and wasn’t their fault. I only fault one person in this the other 2 people were great.
Roslyn Torella
At first I was really impressed with the customer service I received from RenoFi. My project was to fund a renovation for a home that I had 100% equity in, no outstanding mortgage but would need to have a renovation loan because of its current value was lower than what I wanted to borrow. We started the process in late February, I uploaded all the necessary docs to the secure portal and the appraisal was scheduled around March 10th. Everything seemed to be progressing fine but then major delays set in. The appraisal was received by RenoFi within a few days but the underwriting process took forever. I was told to expect 4-6 weeks from start to finish. I was given a conditional approval in late April/early May and told then that my loan would be finished "soon". My loan was finally approved in the second week of June - a full 13 weeks from when I started. Another concern that I had was beinging requested to send documents with my personal and financial information via email rather than uploading them to the secure RenoFi portal. I had to repeatedly ask to have the portal re-opened to upload documents so I did not have to send them via unencrypted and unsecure email. I feel that I would have been better off going directly to a lender than through RenoFi.
Jennifer Jiggetts
The agent I worked with was very slow to get back to me. We wasted weeks waiting for a response from Renofi. Huge waste of time. We were told by renofi that we were approved for 200k. So we started some work knowing the bank process would take some time.
The bank ended up no approving us for the loan. What a waste of time. Would not recommend Renofi
Jbhill2
I wanted to try and reach out to some sort of customer service to try and under stand why my loan approval is two weeks away from 3 months since we started the process….April 25th
We have updated items as soon as they’ve been requested but there have been weeks between requests for new information at points.
We knew this was going to be a process since it was a Reno loan. But this is bordering on absurd now. I don’t get updates unless I ask and I continually get told it’s almost done when it clearly isnt.
This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable take on my part. I don’t know if it’s the loan company you use or what. But this could have been a better experience…..
Arcangelo Esposito
I'm not exaggerating by stating this has been the worst experience in my life. I applied Jan 31st, on May 12th we still don't have a closing date. No communication unless I reach out first, and every time I reach out they are missing further paperwork. Even though I sent everything and everything is in order. Still today, after almost 5 month I still can get an explanation why is taking this long or when my closing date will be.
Nitesh M
too long to get an approval
