After two rounds of layoffs in less than a year, Redfin, the Seattle-based brokerage, last week cut around 200 more jobs, signaling its uncertainty of the residential real estate market picking up steam this year.
While this move, which the company said affected mostly support staff, is smaller than the previous ones, which included laying off 470 employees, or 6% of its workforce, in June 2022, then another 862 in November, when it shuttered its iBuying division, it nevertheless shows that the portal and online brokerage is feeling the financial effects of economic uncertainty nationwide in the still-shifting housing market.
The company, which still has around 5,300 employees, did not release an official statement regarding the new layoffs, but confirmed them to various outlets. CEO Glen Kelman, in a blog post last year that mirrors the new development, wrote: “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. We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales.”
