You signed up for HighLevel. You're staring at a dashboard with about 30 menu items. Now what?
Most loan officers abandon HighLevel within the first two weeks. Not because the platform doesn't work, but because they don't know where to start. They try to set up everything at once, get overwhelmed, and go back to their spreadsheet.
This guide gives you the exact setup sequence. Follow these steps in order, and you'll have a fully operational mortgage CRM within a week.
When you first log into HighLevel, you'll either be in your agency dashboard (if you're on the Unlimited plan) or directly in your sub-account (Starter plan). Either way, the sub-account is where all the action happens.
Go to Settings > Business Profile and fill out everything:
This info populates across your funnels, emails, and review requests. Get it right the first time.
Navigate to Settings > Custom Values. These are account-wide variables you can use in any message template. Set up:
{{custom_values.nmls_number}} - Your NMLS ID{{custom_values.company_nmls}} - Company NMLS{{custom_values.lo_name}} - Your full name{{custom_values.lo_phone}} - Direct number{{custom_values.lo_email}} - Direct email{{custom_values.equal_housing}} - Your equal housing lender disclosure textEvery automated email and text you send needs your NMLS number and proper disclosures. Custom values let you insert these once and use them everywhere. If your NMLS number changes (it won't, but if your company info does), you update one field and every template updates automatically.
This is where most people get tripped up. HighLevel uses either LC Phone (their built-in option) or Twilio for calling and texting. Here's the decision:
Whichever you choose, you need to do two things immediately:
This is not optional. Carriers require business registration before they'll deliver your text messages reliably. Go to Settings > Phone Numbers > Trust Center and complete the registration. You'll need your EIN, business address, and a description of your use case ("mortgage lending communication and marketing").
Registration takes 1-7 business days for approval. Start this on day one. If you skip it, your SMS deliverability will be terrible and you'll wonder why nobody responds to your texts.
Buy a local number with your area code. Leads are significantly more likely to answer or respond to a local number than an 800 number or an out-of-area code.
Default HighLevel emails send from a generic domain. Your deliverability will suffer and you'll look unprofessional. Set up a dedicated sending domain.
Go to Settings > Email Services and add your domain. You'll need to add three DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to your domain registrar. HighLevel walks you through it, but if you're not comfortable with DNS, ask your web person or follow the HL4MP Getting Started course for a screen-by-screen walkthrough.
Pro tip: use a subdomain like mail.yourdomain.com or go.yourdomain.com for sending. This protects your main domain's reputation if anything goes sideways.
This is where HighLevel starts feeling like a real mortgage CRM. Go to Opportunities > Pipelines and create a new pipeline.
Here are the stages we recommend for a standard purchase pipeline:
You might also want separate pipelines for refinance leads and realtor partner tracking. Keep them distinct so your reporting stays clean.
Custom fields live on each contact record and store mortgage-specific data. Go to Settings > Custom Fields and create these:
| Field Name | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Loan Purpose | Dropdown | Purchase, Refinance, Cash-Out, HELOC |
| Loan Amount | Number | Estimated loan amount |
| Property Type | Dropdown | SFR, Condo, Multi-Unit, etc. |
| Credit Score Range | Dropdown | Ranges: 740+, 700-739, 660-699, etc. |
| Target Close Date | Date | When they want to close |
| Lead Source Detail | Text | Specific source beyond the default field |
| Referring Agent | Text | Realtor who referred them |
| Current Rate | Number | For refi monitoring |
These fields power your segmentation and personalization. When you can text a lead "I see you're looking at a $350K purchase in the 720 credit range" instead of a generic "interested in a mortgage?", your response rates will jump dramatically.
Go to Contacts > Import and upload your existing database via CSV. Before you import:
TCPA compliance matters. If a contact didn't explicitly consent to receive text messages from you, don't text them automated marketing messages. You can send one-to-one conversational texts, but bulk automated SMS requires consent. When in doubt, start with email for imported contacts and use SMS only for new leads who opt in through your forms.
Go to Automation > Workflows and create your first one. Start with a speed-to-lead workflow:
Trigger: Contact Created (filtered by source or tag)
Actions (in order):
This single workflow will outperform 90% of loan officers who are still manually following up (or worse, not following up at all).
HighLevel's native integration library is growing, but for mortgage you'll likely need a few connections:
Before you go live, test your setup:
Fix any issues before real leads enter the system. There's nothing worse than finding out your automation has been broken for two weeks while leads silently piled up with zero follow-up.
Everything above takes a dedicated week if you're building from scratch. Or you can import a mortgage-specific snapshot and have all of it: pipelines, custom fields, workflows, email templates, funnel pages, and more, pre-configured and ready to customize in an afternoon.
That's exactly what the HL4 Pro membership includes. Our Snapshot Library is built specifically for mortgage professionals, by mortgage professionals. Import, customize your branding and contact info, and you're live.
Join 600+ mortgage pros in the HighLevel for Mortgage Pros community. Free members get access to weekly breakdowns, the Getting Started course, and a network of LOs who actually use this stuff. Go Pro for $97/mo to unlock the full Snapshot Library, advanced courses, and Broker Toolkit.
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