The popular housing company Zillow announced it is laying off 55 employees in Texas, as it moves away from the home-flipping business. Dallas News reports that the layoffs began in January with 33 and are continuing in phases until August.
The layoffs are due to the end of the company's Zillow Offers business. Zillow would buy, fix and sell homes for profit in markets across the country including Dallas-Fort Worth. According to Dallas News, the affected employees were working for an office in Coppell, but the employees were based throughout Texas. Zillow said in a statement that the affected employees are receiving a severance package that includes 10 weeks of pay and six months of benefits.
Zillow announced last fall, that it would be shutting down Zillow Offers and reducing its workforce by 25% over several quarters. Zillow Group CEO Rich Barton said at the time that forecasting home prices was more unpredictable than what they expected and that growing the business would lead to too much volatility. Geekwire reported that Zillow originally projected an annual revenue of $20 billion by 2024 from the home-flipping program, but the unpredictability proved too much for the company.
According to Dallas News, Zillow has paid off all of its debt related to buying homes in April, earlier than they thought they would. Zillow is not the only real estate industry company to lay off employees amid the unstable market conditions. Mortgage lender First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. said they have terminated 428 of its 565 employees.
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