‘We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales,’ says Redfin CEO announcing 8% layoffs As the U.S. housing sector cools off, housing companies are slashing jobs left, right and center. One CEO of a real estate company said that job cuts were necessary, given how bad things are about to get.
“A layoff is always an awful shock, especially when I’ve said that we’d go through heck to avoid one…But mortgage rates increased faster than at any point in history,” Redfin RDFN, -0.18% CEO Glenn Kelman said in a blog post announcing that he’d asked 8% of the company’s employees to leave. “We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales, and Redfin still plans to thrive.”
Mortgage rates are up on the back of rising inflation, with the average on the 30-year fixed-rate rising 14 basis points to 5.23% for the week ending June 9, according to weekly data from Freddie Mac. New data is expected on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised the benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage point, the biggest increase since 1994 as it tries to tame rising inflation from a 40-year high.
Redfin and another real-estate company, Compass COMP, -2.23%, have both announced that they’re cutting jobs, MarketWatch’s Tomi Kilgore reported on Tuesday. Redfin said it was shedding 470 employees. Compass said it was cutting 10% of its workforce, around 450 jobs.
Rocket Mortgage RKT, 0.07% began offering voluntary buyouts to about 8% of its employees earlier this year.
In November last year, Zillow Z, 4.97% laid off a quarter of its workforce as it shut down its house-flipping operation.
Meanwhile, housing data reported on Wednesday morning signaled further weakness in the sector, one economist said.........
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-could-be-facing-years-not-months-of-fewer-home-sales-says-redfin-ceo-announcing-8-layoffs-11655308343?mod=home-page
