Realtor.com Lays Off Staff Amid Industry Downturn Fears

Realtor.com became the latest real estate company to layoff staff as the North American market braces itself for a downturn.

In a company message sent yesterday, CEO David Doctorow said the reduction in workforce was "necessary to ensure we align resources with our highest opportunity areas", with layoffs spanning most of Realtor.com's locations and functions.

Realtor.com didn't say how many roles were affected.

The company joins Zillow, Redfin and Compass in laying off a significant number of staff in the previous 12 months.

Goldman Sachs warned prospective home sellers on Wednesday that the housing market downturn is expected to worsen in 2023, as reported by the New York Times.

The NYT also reported that in August 2022, 19.4% home sellers cut their asking prices to lure buyers in the cooling US housing market.

Jan Hatzius, strategist and economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a memo to clients:

"We expect home price growth to stall completely, averaging 0% in 2023. While outright declines in national home prices are possible and appear quite likely for some regions, large declines seem unlikely.

"Higher mortgage rates and reduced affordability are not the only drag on housing. Existing home sales and building permits have fallen more sharply this year in regions where they increased the most in the earlier part of the pandemic, suggesting that the recent declines have also reflected the partial retreat of a pandemic-related boost to housing demand."

Goldman Sachs predicts a 22% decline in new home sales before the year is over, a 17% drop in existing home sales and 8.9% in the overall housing GDP, with a forecasted 9.2% decrease in housing GDP in 2023.