Utah’s real estate market disruptor Homie has announced company-wide layoffs, reducing its staff by around 28 percent.
The company is citing unprecedented conditions for house buyers and sellers in Utah and across the country for the job cuts.
Johnny Hanna, co-founder and CEO of Homie, said the layoffs affected 119 people across the company’s operations in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.
Hanna said making the cuts was the most difficult decision he’s ever had to make.
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Hanna said: “Record low inventories have absolutely played a role in this, 2021 was already an incredibly competitive year and we started out this year with even fewer homes than the same time last year. And it’s even more competitive.”
The shift in available homes in the United States was underlined in a report released last week by the National Association of Realtors, which indicated significant reductions in available homes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic jobs.
The analysis found 400,000 less affordable homes available for sale in one category, dwellings accessible to households earning $75,000-$100,000 yearly, compared to the start of the epidemic – 245,300 in December 2021 vs. 656,200 in December 2019.
There was one affordable offering for every 65 families in that income range at the end of last year, compared to one affordable listing for every 24 households in 2019.
Hanna said other forces are at work in the residential real estate market, such as enormous increases in homeowners’ equity amid increasing prices.
He said the sudden house wealth is causing sellers to be less concerned about how much they’re paying out in typical real estate agency contracts, which can be as much as 6 percent of the home’s sale price.
He added in market conditions in which most home sellers are entertaining multiple, and sometimes dozens, of offers, those able to pay in cash were trumping bank-financed buyers.
Hanna added how thankful he was for the work all of Homie’s current and past employees have done in growing the company and said the response he received from a social media posting about the layoffs gave him encouragement that the former workers would find new opportunities.
Hanna said. “I posted on LinkedIn that we were going to let go of almost 120 employees and asked the community to come together and I was blown away at the responses and the supportive environment that we have here.
“Parting ways with people I love is really difficult but knowing they’re being reached out to is a comfort.”
Source: Deseret
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