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Real estate brokerage Redfin (NASDAQ:RDFN) will cut around 8% of staff or 6%, including RentPath and Bay Equity workers, the company announced in a filing Tuesday.
Redfin put the move down to market conditions, stating that May demand is 17% below expectations, and they don’t have enough work for agents and support staff, while fewer sales leave the company with less money for headquarters projects.
Redfin has previously warned of a slowdown in the housing market, saying at the end of March that while the market still felt hot, there was a slowdown in online searches, home tours, and mortgage applications suggesting buyers are getting priced out.
“A layoff is always an awful shock, especially when I’ve said that we’d go through heck to avoid one, and that we raised hundreds of millions of dollars so we wouldn’t have to shed people after just a few months of uncertainty. But mortgage rates increased faster than at any point in history. We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales, and Redfin still plans to thrive. If falling from $97 per share to $8 doesn’t put a company through heck, I don’t know what does,” the company said.
Redfin stock has fallen another 4.4% Tuesday.
