Redfin Cuts 862 Jobs, Citing Slowing Housing Market

SEATTLE — Seattle's Redfin is cutting 13 percent of its workforce, marking the second round of layoffs this year at the real estate firm. The company is also shuttering RedfinNow, its "iBuying" service that purchased properties directly from homeowners to fix up and resell.

In an e-mail sent to employees and published online Wednesday morning, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman announced layoffs for 862 "brilliant, loyal people," citing a cooling housing market and financial risks associated with RedfinNow.

"A layoff is awful but we can't avoid it," Kelman wrote. "We plan to keep increasing our share of the market, but that market in 2023 is likely to be 30% smaller than it was in 2021. The June layoff was a response to our expectation that we'd sell fewer houses in 2022; this layoff assumes the downturn will last through 2023."

The CEO said RedfinNow properties are on track to lose the company up to $26 million by the end of the year, even before overhead expenses.

"[T]he second problem is that iBuying is a staggering amount of money and risk for a now-uncertain benefit," Kelman wrote. "We've tied p hundreds of millions of dollars in houses that you yourself wouldn't want to own right now."

Kelman said Redfin's total workforce has shrunk by 27 percent since the end of April. The latest round of layoffs also impacts another 218 employees whose roles were eliminated but have the option to stay on in other roles.

Each person impacted by the layoffs will receive 10 to 15 weeks of severance and healthcare coverage for three months.