“I’ve tried to take everything in this industry that I hated as an originator and build exactly what I think loan officers would want.”
— Tom Ahles, President, Edge Home Finance
Edge by the numbers
- 49 states of operation
- 1,320 loan officers
- 25,000 loans closed in 2025
- 31,000 loans — the goal for 2026
- 45% year-over-year growth, five years running
- 50–60 new loan officers hired per month
The model behind the growth
Most mortgage brokerages pay loan officers like employees. Edge Home Finance pays them like entrepreneurs.
That’s the philosophy that has turned the company that was founded in 2011 into a 49-state brokerage with 1,280 loan officers, closing 25,000 loans a year and growing 45% year over year for five straight years. President Tom Ahles isn’t selling complicated technology or aggressive recruiting tactics. He’s selling something simpler: a brokerage where loan officers are treated like partners and get paid the day a loan closes.
Ask Tom what’s behind the growth and he doesn’t credit marketing budgets or proprietary tech.
“The main secret sauce has been the people. I don’t do any advertising for our hiring. It’s all through word of mouth.”
Edge runs a 100%-commission model. Loan officers are W-2 employees, but Tom treats them like partners and pays them accordingly.
“We preach entrepreneurship. The last thing to make somebody feel like an employee compared to the entrepreneurial mindset is paying them once a month or twice a month.”
The story that became Edge’s model
Before Edge, Tom was an originator. He still remembers the moment that changed how he thought about payroll forever.
“I remember right when my daughter was born, I closed a couple of loans, like right after December 15th, and I wasn’t getting paid till the end of January. I was trying to put some gifts under the tree and being told that I would have to wait for 45 days.”
That experience became the model for Edge: pay loan officers as fast as the money comes in.
Same-day payroll was non-negotiable. But the legacy payroll systems Tom was using at the time couldn’t deliver it. Two-week pay cycles were the rule. Advances existed, but only after a wait that didn’t match Edge’s values.
“If someone closed a loan, we had the money, and they wanted to be paid, we would have to wait. It really just didn’t align with what we wanted to provide for our team members.”
So Tom went looking for something different.
The switch to Everee
Tom found Everee through a peer at another high-growth brokerage. The pitch was simple: same model as ADP, but same-day payroll actually worked.
Edge made the switch. The result wasn’t subtle.
Edge now settles commission on every single transaction. When a loan closes, the loan officer gets paid. No P&L balance period. No two-week wait. No “sorry, processing takes three business days.”
“To me, if we’re treating our employees like entrepreneurs, I want them to be able to have the money as soon as we have the money.”
Compare that to the retail mortgage shops Edge competes with for loan officer talent. Even at the branch-manager level, retail holds commission until the P&L is balanced.
“For us, we run a similar P&L [to retail competitors], but it’s settled on every single transaction to where they have their money immediately.”
Multi-state compliance, finally not a project
Operating in 49 states means navigating 49 sets of state tax rules. For most brokerages, that’s a full-time research job for someone in finance.
For Tom, it’s something he doesn’t think about anymore.
“It’s taken care of. I don’t need to spend the time researching and creating different ways to accommodate different states based on their own tax laws.”
The same goes for the operational add-ons — non-taxable employee compensation, expense payments, and the back-end work that comes with a fast-growing brokerage. Before Everee, those were physical-check jobs.
“With ADP, we would actually have to cut physical checks, which would be a slower process for the expense process. It’s helped tremendously from that aspect as well.”
What it does for recruiting
Recruiting is Tom’s primary job. He describes the Edge machine in three words: recruit, retain, activate. Most of Edge’s new hires come from retail mortgage shops where pay cycles are biweekly, monthly, or worse. Same-day pay is part of the pitch.
“On recruiting, it does come up. When somebody leaves a retail shop and they’re used to closing three to five loans a month and waiting 30 days to get their money, it’s a huge pain point.”
The pitch isn’t just speed. It’s what speed signals.
“We view them as partners, even though they’re W-2 employees. We want to partner with them. So them feeling like they have control when they’re getting the money that they earned, it’s something that’s just been accustomed to.”
And the proof shows up where prospects look first.
“If you read [another brokerage’s] Glassdoor or Indeed reviews, you’ll hear about payroll issues all the time. And we don’t have those.”
Where Edge is headed
Brokers hold about 28% of the U.S. mortgage market right now. Tom thinks that number should be a lot higher.
“There’s so much upside that it’s hard to say. I think once we get to 50%, things will maybe start to change a little bit, it’ll be more on retention and making things better.”
The plan is straightforward: keep growing. Edge has a goal of 31,000 loans in 2026 and 38,000 in 2027. New loan officers come on at a pace of 50–60 per month. The technology stack — including payroll — has to keep up.
Tom’s standard for what stays in the stack is direct. When asked what he’d tell a peer at another brokerage about Everee, his answer was this:
“Everee is easy to work with, cost effective, and solution-orientated.”
For brokerages that operate like Edge
If you run a brokerage where loan officers have long waits for commissions and where multi-state payroll hits a wall every month, Everee was built for this. Same-day commission settlement. Multi-state compliance handled. W-2 and 1099 on the same platform.
It’s why Edge Home Finance and other fast-growth mortgage brokerages are running their payroll on Everee.
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