>What service are they providing? I'm genuinely curious here, because I don't personally see any added value. I might be missing something though. The same thing every investment firm does: investment. And they are successful at it. Among the best in human history. >Loan for any profit at all is by definition usury. Where's your fee going? That's not correct at all and usuary has never meant that. Usuary is interest at very high rates. Parable of the Talents contains interest for a loan. >NO DENOMINATION of the Christian Church has ever condoned usury, which we might define as an extortionate charge for the use of money or fungible goods, but the charging of interest is no longer regarded as usurious in all circumstances. In fact there is no direct condemnation of interest-taking in the New Testament; it is even tolerated in the Parable of the Talents. The Old Testament authority - Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35, and Deuteronomy 20:19 - does not constitute a blanket ban on interest-taking, but condemns taking interest from the poor, and within the Jewish community. The taking of interest was forbidden to clerics from AD 314. It was strictly forbidden for laymen in 1179. The beginning of the end as far as the total ban on interest was concerned came in the sixteenth century. Although Luther and Zwingli still condemned it utterly, Calvin and some progressive Catholic thinkers such as Collet and Antoine argued that interest-taking did not constitute usury, as long as it represented the real difference between the value of present and future sums of money, and was not mere extortion. https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1030,00.html Charging a flat, fixed, fee is not usuary as long as it is reasonable in cost. A profit is still possible off of $25K to provide, process, and manage your home loan. It would just turn the industry completely on its head. A non-profit home loan banking industry could also exist - that's what you want. They would still require fees to break even. They have to pay for all the "stuff" that allows an organization to even provide such as service.