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Redfin Real Estate Forums :
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Redfin laying off 20% of their employees
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Redfin laying off 20% of their employees
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Hockey_Puck
Regular Contributor
Posts: 73
Registered: 10-16-2008
Message 1 of 3
Viewed 1,926 times
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Redfin Downsizes To Keep SwimmingIn what is likely the first of many more of these sorts of announcements in the real estate space, Redfin is laying off 20% of their employees. In a post on its company blog yesterday, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman explained that the layoffs were due to the company being hit by market conditions that “wiped out prospective down-payments, tours and offers [that] dropped 30%”. It surely must have been a tough decision, but kudos to Kelman for taking immediate and decisive steps to react to the change in the market — and for being so openly transparent about the process. Because of the transactional nature of its business, Redfin is most certainly feeling the pain of this market much sooner than some of its contemporaries - but I suspect this is only the tip of the iceberg, as more Real Estate 2.0 startups start to feel the pinch of the slowing economy. Case in point, in a story on Inman News today, research firm Borrell Associates is “forecasting that annual growth in real estate-related online advertising will slow to 11.3 percent in 2008 and 5.1 percent next year.” For sites pinning their hopes on advertising revenue, it looks like that might be drying up as well.
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10-28-2008 06:37 AM
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Re: Redfin laying off 20% of their employees
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Glenn
Redfin Staff
Posts: 115
Registered: 07-03-2007
Message 2 of 3
Viewed 1,730 times
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Hi there Hockey Puck, it is true that Redfin reduced its staff, as we explained on our own blog a few weeks ago: http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2008/10/a_very_tough_day.html The reductions were mostly focused on our Seattle real estate group and our marketing department. We have grown revenues nearly 50% this year, and increased market-share by more, but our Seattle business has not grown as much, and we anticipate that overall transaction volumes will not increase as much as we had once hoped, prior to the credit crisis. That said, our Southern Calfornia business has grown, turning a profit for the first time, and now shows signs of sustained increases in revenue even through the downturn. We aren't trying to whitewash a setback in our business, or minimize the pain it caused our former colleagues. We of course recognize that startups lead perilous lives that could end in unexpected ways. But we do think our Southern California customers should know that business in this area has increased beyond our expectations, that Redfin overall has out-performed the market, and that we are well-equipped and well-capitalized to be a stable long-term partner. Regards, Glenn Glenn Kelman
CEO, Redfin
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10-28-2008 04:20 PM
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