Seattle's Redfin Confirms Layoffs For 100s Of Employees

SEATTLE — Hundreds of Redfin employees will be out of a job after the Seattle-based real estate brokerage announced layoffs for 8 percent of its workforce Tuesday. In a letter sent to workers and published online, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman blamed a cooling housing market and declining demand.

"To all the departing people who put your faith in Redfin, I’m sorry we can’t keep our commitment to you," Kelman wrote. "With May demand 17% below expectations, we don’t have enough work for our agents and support staff, and fewer sales leaves us with less money for headquarters projects."

According to The Seattle Times, the cuts will impact 470 employees by the end of June, including workers at Redfin-owned RentPath and Bay Equity. Details on how many of those layoffs impacted Seattle workers were not immediately available.

Related: Signs Of A Calmer Housing Market Emerge In Western Washington: NWMLS

Kelman said engineering, analytics and user research teams would suffer the most losses, in stark contrast to the "berserk" levels of recruiting to keep up with customer demand in 2020 and 2021.

"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," Kelman wrote. "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."

Other sections of Kelman's layoff announcement outline plans for boosting profits, by narrowing focus among fewer projects and smaller teams and taking "big bets" to maximize its online tools and website traffic.

Kelman said employees who are laid off will receive two to four months of severance and three extra months of healthcare coverage.

Read the full announcement on Redfin's website.