‘This is not a job where you can clock in at 8:00 a.m. and out at 5:00 p.m.’
Offices across the country shut their doors Thursday and Friday (November 27-28) for Thanksgiving, a landmark event in the US holiday calendar.
But while mortgage professionals took the opportunity for a well-earned break, the holiday offered an all-too-rare chance for brokers to switch off in an increasingly demanding profession.
Recent months have seen a debate emerge on work-life balance in the mortgage industry and whether brokers are able to fully detach from their job or stick to a conventional 40-hour, five-day week.
Compared with friends and family working in other industries, some brokers say they’re putting in longer hours in their daily work.
And the idea of a Monday-to-Friday working week in the mortgage industry, to some, is a fanciful prospect.
“This is not a job where you can clock in at 8:00 a.m. and out at 5:00 p.m. and not have to think about it,” Rebecca Hawley (pictured top), a senior mortgage consultant at M&M Mortgage, told Mortgage Professional America.
“A lot of the work does happen in the evenings and weekends when clients are out searching properties outside of their working hours too.”
‘You want to be available because if not, you could potentially lose the deal’
The fact that clients naturally aren’t shopping for mortgages during their own working hours puts the onus on brokers to field customer calls on weekends or days they’d planned to take off, according to Hawley – particularly because that person will likely just move onto the next broker they can find.
“You want to be available because if not, you could potentially lose the deal,” she said. “I’ve finally found someone I trust to hand off my files to when I’m off, but I still responded to a few emails and texts even when I was on vacation.”
Mortgage applications ticked upward last week despite a sharp increase in borrowing costs, with government-backed purchase loans posting their strongest performance since early 2023.https://t.co/A46hmZFS9v
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) November 26, 2025
Of course, working long hours isn’t a phenomenon that’s unique to the mortgage industry. On average, Americans put in 1,796 hours of work every year – well behind many European countries – and also enjoy much less vacation time than other developed nations.
That’s weighing against the wellbeing of many Americans. A Grant Thornton survey last year on the state of work in America revealed that 51% of respondents had suffered burnout over the previous 12 months, with 63% naming mental and emotional stress as the main reason.
Setting boundaries and a cutoff point essential
The nature of brokers’ work can make it especially difficult to treat their profession like a normal desk job. Clients are often in a hurry to get a deal over the line or rushing to get preapproved for a mortgage, especially when competition is intense and they have their eye on a particularly sought-after home or neighborhood.
And for brokers, it can be difficult to fully extricate themselves from work even in the evenings. Hawley said she takes calls and emails up until 7:00 p.m. but has set a hard cutoff after that time – and lets her clients know well in advance.
“I’m available 11 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said, “and unless they’re out visiting a property and want to put in an offer, I set that boundary early.”
Creating that cutoff time and making sure clients are aware of it early on are crucial steps brokers can take, according to Hawley, to keep expectations in check and carve out some time away from the phone or computer.
That’s easier said than done. “It’s hard because you want to say yes to every single opportunity and you want to be available to your clients,” she said. “In the first two years I used to answer calls, texts, and emails from 5:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. depending on my schedule and then realized that was not stable.
“I needed to set a hard line and unless there is a one-off and someone communicates it to me early, my clients and partners know when my availability is – and they respect it.”
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