Real-estate industry downturn hits Redfin

Redfin, the upstart online real-estate company based in Seattle, announced that it laid off about 20 percent of its staff, CEO Glenn Kelman said in a story today.

Kelman told Times residential real-estate reporter Elizabeth Rhodes that the credit crunch hit the company hard in the past month. After a 50 percent jump in revenue as buyers and sellers looked for ways to save money on home deals, the picture quickly changed as loans became harder to get and the stock-market plunge erased money for down payments. Pending deals fell through, and new ones dried up, Kelman said.

Redfin isn’t the only real-estate company that has made cuts, though. Some agents — particularly fairly new ones paid on commission — are finding the real-estate industry a tough one. This is quite a change from a few years ago, when when people fled other industries to become real-estate agents or mortgage brokers during the housing boom.

So what are all of those former agents, brokers and loan officers doing now?

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http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/therealestatedeal/2008/10/realestate_industry_downturn_h.html