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Editor’s note: This story was updated on Sept. 14, 2023.
The rapid run-up in mortgage rates in 2022 created uncertainty for many real estate companies, forcing many to lay off workers as forecasts for 2023 have grown increasingly dire.
While mortgage and mortgage-adjacent companies were among the first to initiate layoffs this year, economic uncertainty has since led brokerages including Compass, Keller Williams and RE/MAX to follow suit, as well as iBuyers like Opendoor and other ancillary service providers, such as Adwerx and Ribbon.
The downturn kicked off as the end of stimulus measures, which had brought interest rates to historic lows during the coronavirus pandemic, put a screeching halt to the profitable mortgage refinancing boom. By May, Fannie Mae was predicting a slowdown.
Then in October, with mortgage rates still rising and sales growing ever more sluggish, Fannie went a step further and predicted home prices would actually fall nationally in 2023. But economists at the mortgage giant have also forecast that mortgage rates could ease this year as the Fed signals it’s almost done hiking short-term interest rates.
While some companies that provide mortgages, title insurance and closing services have “right sized” to the new expectations, the job market remains strong. At 3.7 percent in November, unemployment is below historic trends, and with 10.3 million job openings in October, many employers are still having a hard time filling openings.
Here’s a comprehensive roundup of the companies that have laid off workers, scaled back hiring or offered buyouts to employees to downsize in recent months.
Adwerx
Adwerx laid off 40 employees on Thursday, July 7 as the company aimed to scale back on “new initiatives,” according to a spokesperson for the digital marketing platform and a series of Linkedin posts from departing employees.
Each outgoing employee received a severance package, Adwerx Chief Marketing Officer Dan London said. No additional layoffs are planned and Adwerx expects to retain its current workforce of roughly 150 employees as it focuses on growth.
Altisource Portfolio Solutions
Hubzu operator Altisource Portfolio Solutions cut nearly 400 positions in 2023 and sought to pay down debt by issuing additional shares in the company. Altisource, which provides solutions to mortgage loan servicers and real estate investors, had 1,496 workers on the payroll at the end of 2022, including 1,142 based in India, 279 in the U.S., 66 in Uruguay, and nine in Luxembourg. In updating investors in September on its plans to cut costs, Altisource said it had trimmed its payroll to 1,100 full-time workers as of Aug. 31, 2023.
Anywhere
Anywhere conducted what it described as a “meaningful” layoff on Jan. 9. The company didn’t say how many positions it cut in total, but did reveal that since June 2022 it has reduced its workforce by 11 percent via multiple rounds of layoffs.
At the same time that it cut jobs in January, Anywhere also axed its iBuyer, RealSure. That move and the layoffs were part of a cost-reduction plan that was taken in response to what the company described as “worsening trends in the housing market.”
Better
An end-to-end provider of mortgage financing, real estate brokerage services and title and closing services, Better Holdco Inc. founder and CEO Vishal Garg made international news in December when he laid off 900 employees over a Zoom call. After the departure of senior executives, including Christian Wallace, the head of Better’s real estate brokerage subsidiary, Better Real Estate LLC, Better shed another 3,000 workers in March. As of May 15, the company employed 2,900 workers, a 72 percent drop from more than 10,000 employees at the end of 2021.
Blend
Mortgage tech, cloud banking platform and title insurance provider Blend Labs Inc. has cut more than 1,000 positions in five rounds of layoffs since April 2022. That includes 340 job cuts announced in January 2023 to streamline the company’s title operations, research and development and sales and marketing teams. Before going public in 2021, Blend paid $422 million to acquire a national title insurance and settlement services provider, Title365, from Mr. Cooper Group. In August 2023, the company said 150 workers who were being laid off represented 19 percent of the company’s onshore workforce, to leave the company with 640 U.S. employees. Blend began 2022 with 2,276 workers, including 587 employed by Title365’s India operations.
Compass
Compass founder and CEO Robert Reffkin announced in mid-June that his company was laying off 10 percent of its workforce or about 450 employees. All of the layoffs involved full-time staffers, rather than agents. In an email to Compass workers, Reffking explained that “the economic environment has consistently worsened over these last few months.” He went on to cite rising inflation and mortgage rates, as well as a consensus among industry leaders that a recession could be coming. In addition to letting go of employees, Compass also opted to halt further expansion for the time being.
CoStar
Commercial real estate giant and would-be residential disruptor CoStar cut 100 jobs in early December. The layoffs were part of a restructuring that aimed to integrate the Homes.com and Homesnap brands. In a statement, CoStar said the eliminated positions were duplicative roles, though the company also said it has plans to continue increasing total staff numbers in the near future.
Divvy Homes
Rent-to-own provider Divvy Homes has pared back its workforce in the rounds of layoffs in 2022 and 2023. The first round of layoffs, in the fall of 2022, affected 12 percent of Divvy’s workforce, or about 40 of roughly 330 employees. Divvy, which purchases homes on behalf of its customers and rents them back to them while they build equity on the properties, provided no details on a second round of layoffs in February, 2023. A third round of layoffs in September 2023 affected 95 employees in 21 states, including a number of senior managers at the company’s San Francisco headquarters, according to WARN Act notices the company filed with state employment departments. Divvy has been the subject of media reports alleging that the company charges higher rents than other landlords in some markets (Fast Company) and has stepped up evictions of renters who are struggling to pay (The New York Times).
Doma
Digital title insurance, escrow and closing provider Doma cut its workforce by 52 percent in 2022, eliminating 1,076 positions across the company and leaving it with 1,062 employees as of Dec. 31. Doma announced the first of three rounds of layoffs in May affecting 310 workers as rising mortgage rates cooled its customers’ mortgage originations. As part of a strategy shift to concentrate on providing its instant underwriting technology to mortgage originators, Doma has been closing unprofitable title insurance branches and in May 2023 agreed to sell 22 retail title locations and operations centers employing 123 workers in California to Williston Financial Group.
First Guaranty Mortgage Corp.
Citing “significant operating losses and cash flow challenges,” Plano, Texas-based non-QM lender FGMC cut 76 percent of its workforce — 428 employees — on June 24, leaving not only employees but borrowers and lender partners in the lurch.
Flyhomes
Seattle-based end-to-end homebuying services provider laid off 20 percent of the company’s workforce on July 20, citing “the largest interest rate hike in nearly 30 years” and its impact on housing demand. “The extremely difficult, but necessary, step we took today was necessary to address market conditions that have not been seen in the recent past,” the company said.
The company conducted a second round of layoffs on Nov. 9. Flyhomes didn’t say how many employees it cut in the second round of layoffs. However, in its announcement the company did point to “rapidly shifting market conditions” that required taking “painful steps” to “ensure the long term trajectory of the company.”
Guaranteed Rate
Guaranteed Rate — known to many real estate agents for its joint ventures with franchising giant Realogy Holdings Corp. and national brokerage firms @properties and Compass — made a big move in early 2021, acquiring Stearns Holdings LLC “with the ultimate goal of becoming the nation’s number one lender.” In January 2023, Guaranteed Rate pared down its ambitions, laying off 348 employees and closing down its third-party wholesale channel, Stearns Wholesale Lending.
Homie
Utah-based flat-fee brokerage Homie laid off 119 employees in February, about a third of its workforce, saying limited housing inventory had “created a challenging real estate market for home buyers.”
The company laid off several dozen more employees, and lost its CEO, in early October as market conditions continued to prove challenging.
HomeLight
Agent referral startup HomeLight, which achieved unicorn status last year after raising hundreds of millions of dollars, announced on June 29 that it was cutting jobs. A company spokesperson told Inman that 19 percent of the company’s workforce was affected.
Homepoint
The nation’s third-largest wholesale mortgage lender Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Homepoint confirmed to Inman on Sept. 2 that it planned to lay off “hundreds” of workers. According to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notices Homepoint filed with officials in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Texas, the layoffs will affect at least 913 employees in those four states alone. Parent company Home Point Financial Corp. said it expects those and other cost-cutting measures to reduce annual expenses by $100 million.
Homeward
Power buyer Homeward announced Aug. 10 that it was shedding 20 percent of its workforce amid the ongoing market slowdown. The company declined to confirm the exact number of people it was letting go, but with approximately 600 employees on the payroll prior to the announcement, the move puts the number of layoffs somewhere in the neighborhood of 120.
The decision was based partly on how market conditions had harmed its “buy with cash” offering, Tim Heyl told employees in a letter announcing the move. The company’s “buy before you sell” product, by contrast, was maintaining interest and prospects for growth, Heyl wrote.
Homeward announced a second round of layoffs on Nov. 16. The company once again cited the market slowdown and said that 25 percent of the company would ultimately be leaving — putting the cuts on par with the previous round in August. Additional employees were also slated to experience furloughs and repositions.
Keller Mortgage
Real estate franchise giant Keller Williams laid off 150 recent recruits from its lending arm, Keller Mortgage, in October 2021, and handed out more pink slips at the end of May 2022 as part of a restructuring of the company’s operations and support groups. Restructuring of the mortgage operations group continued in October with what one affected employee said were an additional 60 layoffs. Even as it laid workers off, Keller Mortgage said it was committed to long-term growth and advertised openings for loan officers to work remotely from anywhere in the U.S.
Keller Williams Realty
In addition to cuts at Keller Mortgage, Keller Williams’ franchise arm has also made cuts over the past 12 months. The company completed two rounds of layoffs in July and August, with the first round impacting ten Keller Williams University and Connect Live employees. The second round hit the franchisors’ social media and marketing teams, with 23 staff members being laid off three days before Keller Williams’ annual training conference Mega Camp.
Kiavi
A San Francisco-based provider of financing to house flippers and long-term real estate investors, Kiavi downsized on July 13, just weeks after offloading more than $200 million in loans to Wall Street investors.
Knock
One year after hiring Goldman Sachs to take the company public at a proposed valuation of $2 billion, Power Buyer Knock announced layoffs affecting 115 employees in March or about 46 percent of its workforce. Having stepped away from plans for IPO and closing a smaller $220 million funding round with private investors, Knock said downsizing would allow it to continue with plans to expand into 90 markets by the end of the year.
LoanDepot
After trimming about 900 jobs from the payroll during the final three months of the year, loanDepot finished 2022 with 5,200 employees, about 6,100 fewer than the 11,300 it started with. Staffing cuts and reduced spending on marketing helped loanDepot slash $91.4 million in expenses during the fourth quarter, a 21 percent reduction. LoanDepot CEO Frank Martell, who took the CEO reins from company founder Anthony Hsieh in April, is working to get the company back to breakeven announcing in August that loanDepot would be shutting down its wholesale lending business.
Mr. Cooper
Rising mortgage rates are making what has traditionally been Mr. Cooper’s main business — collecting mortgage payments from nearly 4 million borrowers — much more profitable. But they’re also limiting the company’s ability to originate new mortgages, prompting the company to lay off 250 workers during the first quarter of 2022, another 420 workers during the second quarter and 800 workers during the third quarter. Mr. Cooper started the year with 8,200 employees, so the 1,470 announced layoffs to date mean the company has downsized by about 18 percent since then.
Notarize
After almost single-handedly creating the category, remote online notarization startup Notarize laid off 110 employees on June 15, with CEO Pat Kinsel citing economic uncertainty and access to future investment capital.
Offerpad
Offerpad laid off about 7 percent of its workforce in September, and staffing is down about 12 percent from peak employment due to a hiring pause instituted earlier this year, CFO Mike Burnett said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.
Opendoor
Opendoor announced on Nov. 2 that it was cutting about 550 jobs or roughly 18 percent of its workforce. The cuts came amid increasing pressure on iBuyers thanks to sluggish price appreciation and on the eve of Opendoor’s third-quarter earnings report. In addition to cutting jobs, Opendoor also cut ties with third-party vendors and enacted other cost-saving measures.
The company conducted another round of layoffs in April, ultimately shedding 560 employees. The cuts amounted to 22 percent of Opendoor’s total workforce. In a statement, Opendoor cited a challenging market with higher rates and fewer listings as the reason for the layoffs.
Orchard
A vertically-integrated power buyer that provides services in 13 markets, Orchard announced on June 23 that it was laying off about 10 percent of its workforce, or nearly 100 employees, across a mix of departments. In an internal note to employees, CEO Court Cunningham said the layoffs were driven by “mounting economic uncertainty” and the need for Orchard to “get to profitability as soon as possible, so that we control our own destiny.” Even as it downsized, the company said it would continue to seek to fill about 50 openings in its mortgage, real estate brokerage, marketing and finance departments.
Orchard carried out a second, even larger round of layoffs on Nov. 17. This round saw the company cut 180 positions or about 23 percent of the company. In a LinkedIn post announcing the layoffs, Orchard said the housing market was experiencing “one of the biggest disruptions” in history.
Pacaso
Second home co-ownership platform Pacaso, founded by former Zillow executives Austin Allison and Spencer Rascoff, announced on Oct. 11 that it had reduced its staff by 30 percent.
“Early in 2022, the capital markets—venture capital firms and public market investors—were enthusiastically funding growth stage companies,” Allison said in a company blog post. “Our business expansion and headcount were designed for this hyper-growth environment, which was appropriate for the market conditions at the time. Fast forward ten months and we now must prepare for a recession. This change reverts our headcount back to January 2022 levels, and right-sizes our team for the immediate road ahead.”
Pennymac
The nation’s second-biggest mortgage lender, Pennymac laid off 236 workers from six locations in California in May, citing falling demand for home loans. Pennymac employed 7,208 workers worldwide at the end of last year.
Reali
California-based real estate brokerage and power buyer Reali announced Aug. 24 that it was shutting down and would lay off most of its workforce on Sept. 9, citing “challenging real estate and financial market conditions and [an] unfavorable capital-raising environment.” Although Reali did not say how many workers would be affected, the California Department of Real Estate listed 249 real estate salespersons affiliated with Reali Inc.’s San Mateo-based real estate brokerage business, and Reali Loans Inc. employed nine mortgage loan originators working out of two active branch locations, according to records maintained by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry. Reali said a small team of employees would continue to support real estate transactions in progress through the end of the year.
Realtor.com
Real estate portal Realtor.com announced layoffs on Sept. 8, exactly one month after parent company Move’s fourth-quarter earnings call that revealed single-digit revenue growth amid a shifting housing market. Realtor.com CEO David Doctorow said the layoffs came after “much consideration and exploration of alternative scenarios” to protect the company’s growth and longevity.
A Realtor.com spokesperson declined to share specifics of the layoffs, including how many employees and contractors were impacted and which departments were hit hardest; however, they said everyone impacted will receive “generous severances” that include COBRA healthcare coverage, career counseling and outplacement services.
Redfin
The online search portal turned full-service real estate brand shed 8 percent of its staff on June 14. CEO Glenn Kelman attributed the move to a 17 percent drop in demand for May. The layoff was expected to impact nearly 500 people, including agents, engineers, recruiters, trainers and other support staff.
Redfin’s bid to expand its presence in mortgage lending by acquiring San Francisco-based Bay Equity Home Loans for $135 million also meant pink slips for 121 existing workers in sales support, capital markets and operations at Redfin’s existing mortgage business.
Redfin cut another 13 percent of its staff in November when it announced that it was ending RedfinNow, the company’s iBuying program.
RE/MAX
RE/MAX announced on July 7, 2022 that it plans to discontinue its booj technology platform, which launched in 2019. As a result, the company also revealed plans to cut its staff by 17 percent by the end of 2022.
Cuts were largely in tech-focused departments. In place of booj, RE/MAX has struck up a partnership with technology provider Inside Real Estate to offer the kvCORE platform.
In August 2023, the company announced an additional 7 percent of staff layoffs (or around 40 employees) to be conducted by the end of September as part of a company reorganization to streamline operations and generate cost savings.
REX Real Estate
After implementing two rounds of layoffs last year, discount brokerage REX Real Estate shuttered two offices in Texas in May. Although reports suggested that REX Real Estate had shed all of its agents and was preparing to shut down, REX co-founder and COO Lynley Sides told Real Trends that the company has pivoted to brokering deals for institutional landlords in California and Florida.
Ribbon
After expanding into eight new states and more than doubling its market footprint in 2022, Power Buyer Ribbon announced on July 28 that it would lay off 136 employees or about one-third of the company’s workforce. Company co-founder and CEO Shaival Shah said Ribbon, which had planned to be in 25 states by the end of the year, would continue expanding into an unspecified number of new markets.
Ribbon made an even bigger cut in November, effectively reducing its workforce to a skeleton crew.
Rocket Companies Inc.
Rocket Companies Inc. — the parent company of a stable of brands, including Rocket Mortgage, Rocket Homes and Amrock — shed 7,500 workers in 2022, finishing the year with 18,500 employees or 29 percent fewer than it began with. But the company says rather than laying off employees, it’s downsized through attrition and by offering voluntary buyout offers. In a bid to avoid layoffs, Rocket first made buyout offers in April 2022 to approximately 2,000 workers that were expected to save Rocket about $180 million per year, executives said at the time. Although Rocket lost its title as the nation’s largest lender to UWM in 2022 and racked up a $493 million fourth-quarter net loss, the company managed to salvage a $700 million profit for the full year after slashing 2022 annual expenses by 25 percent.
Roofstock
Three days after making company history with the sale of its first real estate NFT (non-fungible token), San Francisco-based tech startup Roofstock laid off 20 percent of its workforce on Oct. 21. The company declined to share how many employees it laid off and whether they offered severance packages.
Side
Side’s most recent layoffs took place in mid-October. The company cited “planned technology advancements that have increased our efficiency, as well as consideration of the broader macroeconomic climate.” The company did not say how many employees lost their jobs.
Side also laid off employees in June. Saying it expanded faster than it could train, support and develop recent hires, real estate technology startup Side notified about 10 percent of its employees in late spring that they were out of a job.
Side, which provides branding and technology to independent brokerages and often serves as the broker of record for high-performing agent teams, said last summer that it was on track to go public after achieving unicorn status and raising more than $250 million in funding.
Sprout Mortgage
Sprout Mortgage, which claimed to be the largest provider of “non-Qualified Mortgages” in the U.S., shut down without warning on July 6 leaving more than 300 employees out of work. Sprout Mortgage was the second non-QM lender to implode in as many weeks, following in the footsteps of PIMCO-backed First Guaranty Mortgage Corp., raising questions about the viability of a small but growing corner of the mortgage business that largely serves self-employed borrowers.
Sundae
Property marketplace Sundae, which lets homesellers sell their properties as-is to investors without hiring a real estate agent, announced layoffs in June affecting 15 percent of the company’s workforce, primarily in its newest markets.
Tomo
A mortgage fintech launched by former Zillow executives with an exclusive focus on purchase loans, Tomo cut its workforce by nearly one-third on May 31. Citing a “recent shift in the mortgage and venture capital markets due to the rapid increase in interest rates,” CEO Greg Schwartz said Tomo was postponing, for now, plans to expand into additional markets.
United Wholesale Mortgage
United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) boosted purchase loan production in 2022 to overtake Rocket Mortgage as the nation’s biggest lender, but finished the year with 6,000 employees, shedding 2,000 workers or 25 percent of the 8,000 employees it started the year with. Like Rocket, UWM executives say they’ve avoided layoffs and have downsized the company by scaling back hiring.
Vacasa
Portland-based short-term rental platform Vacasa announced on Jan. 24 that it was shedding 17 percent of its workforce, a layoff equivalent to about 1,300 employees.
The company said the cuts would roll out through mid-year, and they were expected to cost the company about $5 million in severance payments.
Vacasa CEO Rob Greyber, who was appointed to his role in August 2022, told employees in an email that those affected by the layoffs had already been notified. He also provided an insight into the company’s outlook, saying it would focus on adding homes to the platform and improving its software.
Wells Fargo
As part of a plan to withdraw from correspondent mortgage lending and simplify the bank’s home lending business, Wells Fargo has engaged in several rounds of layoffs in 2022 and 2023. Although the bank has offered little in the way of specifics, regulatory filings show Wells Fargo shed 10,000 employees across all of its divisions in 2022, finishing the year with 239,000 workers. Once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, Wells Fargo saw fourth quarter 2022 loan production shrink to $14.6 billion, down 70 percent from a year ago, with nearly half of that production coming through the correspondent channel.
Zillow
Portal and lead generation giant Zillow laid off 300 workers in October. The cuts came from a variety of the company’s verticals, including Zillow Offers, Zillow Closing Services, Zillow home loans and others. In a statement, the company said that it had “made the difficult — but necessary — decision to eliminate a small number of roles and will shift those resources to key growth areas around our housing super-app.”
Zumper
Online rental search company Zumper cut 15 percent of its staff in early June, proving that the rental market is not immune from the economic turmoil rocking the industry. Sources said all teams at the company that had about 300 employees were impacted. A Zumper spokeswoman cited “macroeconomic and market factors” for the decision.
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