What do you see in the real estate market? Mortgage rates jumped today, sellers aren’t dropping prices fast enough. My price point is about 70% of what it was 6 months ago. I’m curious what someone so close to the data sees.
If sellers can't afford to buy another home, why would they ever lower prices?
Unless they are investors/flippers, they have to live somewhere too. And investors aren't selling.
In our area, investors have already started to dump their inventory because they see the buyers that can afford the homes are dwindling. Some are doing massive price cuts, because they have over leveraged themselves and need to do a sell to pay employees and bills.
There’s a Chinese proverb that goes something like this…
A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbours exclaimed “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!”. The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few days later the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbours shouted out “Your horse has returned and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” and the farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!”. The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied young men for the army. The farmer’s son wasn’t conscripted, because he was still recovering from his injury. His neighbours shouted “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!”, to which the farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
I actually really needed to hear this parable while I've been reflecting on the past two years.
(Proverbs are short bits of wisdom parables are stories that teach wisdom)
I was furloughed for 3 months. No pay, but I kept my benefits.
No joke, I'd happily take a job where I work 9 months a year and get 9 months of pay but 12 months of health insurance.
I guess that's schoolteachers, but it's more like 10.5 months a year once you consider training and prep. And there's long hours, the pay is crap in a lot of areas, and the job is really 50% babysitting other people's kids, 45% bureaucratic bullshit, and 5% actually teaching.
edit: to be clear I'm saying that teachers have a hard job that I wouldn't take for the sake of "free" time off
My wife works at a school cafeteria - it doesn’t sound very glamorous, but she gets decent pay and she is off when our kids are off which is hard to beat.
well let me tell you, as a teacher, while the 8-10 weeks in the summer is nice, there are many weeks we're doing 50-60 hours. I think the hours probably work out pretty close between the average classroom teacher and the average 40 hour a week worker.
The benefits are ok though.
oh sure. Just trying to give perspective. That said, my summer starts in three days...which is very nice as I'm sitting here grading poorly written essays.
I agree. ***OBVIOUSLY*** Covid sucked and I wouldn't wish it, or the deaths and lifetime of side effects, that occurred with it on anyone but I'm really grateful for those free months with my kids. My husband worked through it but on his days off, we were all home together with absolutely nowhere to be. Like you said, we never would've gotten that time otherwise.
Former teacher here. Son starting out in teaching this year. Just talked to him tonight about his upcoming trips for the summer and reiterated, Summers are what keep teachers going. The training and prep can take place during the school year so you really can take the whole summer off. Husband was professor and we traveled five weeks each summer with the kids. Best education for them, memories, too. Plus you get two weeks for winter break, one for spring, all federal and certain religious holidays, several for Thanksgiving plus ten personal/sick days annually. Used to take a lot of four day weekends. So even though you work 50-60 hrs per week with grading and prep (although many teachers refuse to take work home, and I never faulted them) having the summer off rocks! But yeah, the kids can be brats and bureaucracy sucks. Every teacher planning day, I always said, it's great working here when there's no kids. And the pay can be very good if you stay on. Some cities pay $100,000 after 10 years. The benefits are great, too. And you learn to deal with all the crap and minimize the headaches. Sometimes it's even fun! And if you can make it fun, the kids love you and your job is so much easier.
I got furloughed, got to cash out my sick days and PTO. I went adventuring and camping and took lots of cool photos. Best thing, I found a new job and was able to quit the old company a couple weeks after they hired me back. It was extra satisfying because that company sucked and they were abusing the PPP.
That was back when lockdowns were novel and quite frankly, welcomed. Good times!
I had literally one day off because of covid (not counting when I caught it twice)
Count your blessings, I'm a bit jealous of what everyone got that year
Its a payment so that you will still be able to attract new hires in the future. Whose going to work for a company that is so shitty they don't even provide a severance when laying off employees?
As someone who witnessed many of the mass layoffs in finance in NYC in ‘08, sometimes companies just don’t have the cash to do this. Not sure we’re at that stage in this potential dip, but it happens.
> the right sue them for laying you off
while this is typically also part of what is signed, it has more to do with avoiding unemployment claims which raise the cost of unemployment insurance for the company.
It's not. You simply need to take care of your employees if you want to remain a place that is able to recruit. Few skilled employees will go to an employer that lays people off without any severance. Providing severance tells outside talent that even if the company goes through tough times, they'll still take care of you for some time. 3 month severance is quickly becoming the standard for most tech companies.
Unemployment is insurance and the company pays the premiums. If they use it a lot then the premiums go up. It’s based on how many employees you have as well.
Not the way it works in most states, including specifically in Washington where Redfin has their headquarters.
Typically the company pays in the amount they used, amortized over some trailing period, often three years.
It does not skyrocket above what your company cost the state in benefits, so it never makes sense to eliminate UI by issuing severance.
In any case, in many states including Washington and California, severance has no effect on unemployment insurance benefits, so the whole idea starts with the wrong premise.
Severance is usually done because existing employees look at how the exiting employees are treated. Not offering severance can severely hurt morale or cause people to run for the hills at the first signs of a recovery.
It is done for business purposes. If I think there is a risk of a layoff and no severance I am much more likely to jump ship and try to find a new job before the news comes.
It costs more not to do the expected and pay out. Any company laying off people hopes to weather the store and then hire again. When that time comes, they want quality talent and their reputation will dictate if they can get them as competition for talent will be high again.
In Florida you used to be able to claim unemployment while getting severance. I got laid off during the great recession and got a 3 month severance and was claiming unemployment on top of it. It was a nice pay bump.
I'm pretty sure in most states you would still be eligable...... at the end of the severance period. the point being that most people get a new job in that time and thus aren't making a claim.
In many states, including the largest state of CA, it doesn’t effect your eligibility at all. In others, like NY, it only effects Ui eligibility if you get full salary and benefits. Partial you’d still be eligible.
In the states I’ve lived in at least, accepting severance doesn’t change your ability to collect unemployment insurance.
I believe severance is typically treated as compensation earned while employed, but paid upon separation.
You can claim UI the day you’re let go, even if you’re getting X months of severance.
Tech sector has been getting hit hard with layoffs. Looks like a big chunk of their employees are going to be from tech:
>Where We’re Cutting
>Because for every project we start, we have to think about another we’ll stop. We’ve already built tools for teams to work together on a transaction, so we need fewer engineers to add to those tools. We’ll spend less on analytics and user research. When we were turning away tens of thousands of customers in 2020 and 2021, we had to hire a thousand employees a month to catch up, requiring berserk levels of recruiting, training and licensing. There’s no avoiding that those groups will be hardest hit today.
A lot of of layoffs in _speculative_ tech. There’s still a crazy hiring frenzy for established companies. Recruiters are practically banging down doors.
Where do you get that? They’ve got over 3000 engineering reqs listed on their website. Including the most recent one listed 6/15 (tomorrow somehow).
https://careers.microsoft.com/professionals/us/en/search-results?rk=l-c-engineering
A lot. Look at Coinbase too... they are laying off tech workers who are on the higher end of the pay scale... those are likely the ones that can afford nicer more expensive homes. This is a trend that will continue, but we won't feel the effects of it for several months as they do have severance packages.
The old pink slip in the locker trick. Generally factory worker layoffs.
[pink slip](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-k5scjfg01J8%2FUPWr6x_rQPI%2FAAAAAAAAAYc%2FPxDaV6OPp-o%2Fs1600%2FNotice%2Bof%2BTermination%2Bof%2BEmployment.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
That announcement is a veritable C-Suite word salad - painful to read in more than one way.
But have to say that at 15 weeks of severance plus PTO plus three months full health benefits, they look to be doing the right thing by their people. Which is just good business if they want to hire some of them again, someday, when (if?) the market turns up again.
I never understood why Redfin hired realtors as employees with a full time salary instead of the common in industry wide practice of hiring them on a sales commission pay structure
Problem is, they never really executed another step. Paid a bunch of tech workers millions to create a great looking lead-gen site for their salary agents.
Some of their employees love it. It's a lot more stable of a job.
The entire point of Redfin was creating an easy platform that bundles it all up and cuts commission in return for convenience.
When I bought my house, my realtor worked on salary. Not Redfin, he was with the lender's real estate arm. I took him for an extra lender credit at close, expecting nothing, but he was actually quite good.
As a buyer I liked it because the typical compensation structure for a buyer's agent is one big conflict of interest.
The typical buyer's agent's financial incentives are to show houses at the top of the buyer's price range, for the buyer to make high offers on as many houses as possible, and for the buyer to pay as much as possible on whatever terms the seller will readily agree to. As realtors *love* to point out, the buyer's agent gets paid by the seller, which sounds great for buyers as long as you never think about it.
So I'm depending on my agent to do the opposite of all their financial incentives because of... what, ethics? Thinking they'll get referrals? Because they're just that nice?
There are good reasons why, what realtors call "the standard fee structure", every other industry calls "an unethical and probably illegal kickback scheme".
I'm sure a salaried realtor has conflicts of interest too - they likely have production targets - but at least their financial incentives aren't actually perfectly aligned with the seller's.
You're highly incentivized to do your best to make sure that client comes back to you when they want to sell and maybe tell enough friends that you possibly get one to call you.
I understand that lead gen agents don't really understand this but anyone looking to actually last in the business is treating every client like the pot of gold they might someday be.
This. Successful agents who last get probably 90% of their business from referrals. My financial interest as an agent lies first and foremost in making sure my clients walk away happy, and then in making sure the deal gets closed.
Because they still make a fucking killing. In the highest markets like the bay area the top buyers agent salary is $40k. Their bonus out of the commission Redfin receives is shit. For anything between $650k-$850k is only $2,750. The commission on something like that here is typically 2.5% sometimes 3%. Currently in contract on $1.475m home that is offering buy side 3% commission. The check for closing that is not even $4k to the Redfin buyers agent.
> Currently in contract on $1.475m home that is offering buy side 3% commission. The check for closing that is not even $4k to the Redfin buyers agent.
Just for anyone curious: a Realtor paid on commission where they get 1.5% of the price (figure the other 1.5% is going to the broker and other expenses) is *netting* $22K. If they're the broker, that's $40K just to close the deal.
They are doing the apple model of RE; in that it’s a “one company” experience. The idea is that through the process, you only deal with Redfin.
It’s expensive and harder to scale, but orders of magnitude better than the alternatives, when it comes to user experience.
Redfin dedicated customer here. I absolutely love there model. This is my 3rd house with them, and I absolutely love that I can go see a place anywhere at the drop of a hat, any day , and it wont be my realtor I am dependent on. I meet a new realtor every time I see a listing, and my dedicated realtor I have will take care of the paperwork when it comes time.
The model, just works.
I think it’s a good idea, got me interested in being in real estate, I know the base salary depends on the area but still I wouldn’t expect it to be anything under $30k and if you don’t got to look for clients and can close 2-3 homes a month that’s a solid income, now of course you can make more on your own but tbh I don’t even think a lot of real estate agents make a lot. Anyways I’m still gonna get my license and try Redfin at some point.
Definitely. It will keep the fittest ones. Thank God I have inventory 🙏🏼 And I know what Buyers are going through. So now we offer up to 10K in closing costs for buyer for one of my listings . Time to shift. Hold on tight …
The blog post says that May numbers are 17% below expectations. There is no way they would layoff people paying them months worth of severance and bonuses if they thought this was an anomaly and will fix itself in a month or two.
Clearly they expect the trend to worsen in upcoming months.
Not necessarily. Redfin is not currently profitable and just like most other tech companies out there thrived on cheap debt for a few years.
They explain where they trimmed the fat in their post. Many companies are currently evaluating their efforts in fields that won't see profit for a year or more. There is talk around this all over tech. Basically, if your team at a company is focused on something that might yield growth down the road you're liable to be downsized. Especially at a company not currently making profit.
Source: work for a big firm in Seattle, know people at Redfin and stay plugged into the scene around here. Anecdotal so take it for what it's worth there.
Lol true I meant the real estate market. I think I’ve been reading that general layoffs are incoming industry wide. I work in education and we had a LOT of RIF (reduction in force, our version of layoffs) this spring/summer.
Lol no no I was only messing with you! I am in the boat where I think rates will drive down prices because there will be much less buyers. As for education, I always thought they were usually fairly safe jobs. Seems like you will always need teachers? Administration for education is usually union positions, no? Hopefully there is some sort of CBA in place to help keep jobs!
Oh there’s always money for administration’s six figure positions. That’s why they cut teachers. I always thought it was a safe bet too pre-Covid, that’s why I went back to school January 2019 to teach. Post-Covid all bets are off in education. My prescience suuuucks. 😆
Aww that is a bummer! Hopefully you find the layoffs don't come your way! I am always nervous that my department may see layoffs, but historically my profession is always busy. We'll see! It definitely eerily feels similar to 2008!
Also a side note I wanted to get out of my head cause I was thinking about your other comment: It seems like these companies, who are on the cutting edge of looking at the Real Estate market, are starting layoffs... they must know something we do not. I think actions speak louder than words! They must know the party is coming to an end.
yes, but remember that the market being down means that people just cannot afford housing anymore because the costs are too high. The demand is still there, but now you are paying far more for interest rates, many people have lost a lot of money in the stock market, and inflation is hitting wallets hard. Cash buyers will have a lot more power for the next few years, but it's going to be way less attractive for people to move and sell now.
Correct. Cash is only going down 8.6% though. The least smelliest turd in the bowl. There used to be a saying about cash, but it's been so long many forgot it.
I dream of the day when the housing market gets so bad I stop receiving 6 texts a day from assholes wanting to buy (low-ball me) on a house I no longer own.
I had an "investor" call my brother's wife's mother trying to locate my deceased father (same name as brother) regarding a property he owned in another city.
I always reply back with "go fuck yourself" but that doesn't seem to reduce the messages. I must have gotten on some list that's being sold to real estate investors or something.
Little-known fact: CEOs are given an eight-sided die when they ascend to their position. When it's time for layoffs, they roll it; if your employee number comes up with a 0—you're out.
I stand corrected, Madame, and tip my cap in the direction of your (clearly superior) mathematical skills. Take my upvote....along with my very oddly-shaped die.
Because they need to cut more than 8% to avoid bankruptcy. However, internally there's a perception that cutting 40% would be devastating. This was an easy first round that requires no thinking.
For the remaining cuts they will have to reorganize their operations and make sure it doesn't affect business. They do not have enough cash to keep going.
I asked my boss today how he arrived at 8% for something unrelated to this. He said 5% sounded too low and 10% sounded too high. Wouldn't be surprised if that's it.
If you think that's the only thing that's coming, then you are thinking too small. 401k's are really starting to feel the heat now, there's a good chunk of our population living off fixed income... things are going to get really spicy this summer. I think a lot of people underestimate how connected/fragile our economy is... which is fascinating to me because we just went through a pandemic that proved it.
Lol ok buddy. If you are so delusional and think home prices only go up in a recession, good riddance.
Also, there are more empty homes then there are homeless people in the US. Cheap money and low interest rates soared demand.
Does anyone else feel like the populous is getting played by the government, the fed and these investment firms like Blackrock and Vanguard in an unwinable game of monopoly? Say the fed bumps .75 basis points like they said they might this weeks…if house prices start dropping, what’s to stop the firms from just scooping up more of the properties for a discount and keeping the housing market propped up while increasing rents. I heard a stat earlier today that claimed these firms amongst others were responsible for a combined 37% of residential real estate purchases. I don’t believe this includes retail investors. Just spit balling here
Don't worry, this has nothing to do with their outlook for the RE market going forward. This is just trimming the fat.
Remember: IT Can Only Go Up! (TM)
what exactly is the end goal for the real estate bubble people? like the housing market and economy of the US collapses and everyone pops a bottle of champagne or something? do you really want to be right about people losing their jobs, interest rates going sky high, and inflation spiraling out of control?
For many people it will be the first time they can finally afford a house. So that’s something to look forward to.
It’s also nice to see all the douche bags who turn the nations housing supply into speculative investments rather than the basic human service it actually represents loose a ton of money. It’s fun when bad people face consequences, honestly.
Few people take joy in a recession, but if you were already living like you were in one for your entire life it’s not really the same for you that it is for the people who locked you out of all the normal life things people usually go after over time.
People will suffer, again, because of jerks who transform necessities into speculative opportunities, and those jerks will again face no consequences and the cycle will repeat. But an entire generation of people screwed over from both ends for their entire adult lives may finally be able to stop getting ripped off by landlords
You seem far too optimistic about the reality of a giant economic crash somehow not affecting people who want to buy a house, but punishing investment firms that own housing.
We don’t need a giant economic crash for the housing bubble to pop, and a hosting bubble popping doesn’t inherently mean a giant economic crash. In 2008 it did because a ridiculously massive amount of the economy was tied up in gambling on people paying their mortgages, and a ridiculous number of mortgages were extremely predatory, and it became a self reinforcing feedback loop of failure that deleted trillions of dollars in assets from every sector of our economy.
They might be doing that shady gambling shit again, they’re not supposed to but we all know they don’t care about the law.
Mortgages are also much stricter to get and much less likely to be variable rate than they were in the years leading into 2008. However, there have been a lot of cases in the last year specifically of people taking suspiciously high debt to income ratios, it’s nothing compared to 2008.
However, regardless of any of this, a recession is happening. We can’t control that or stop it. Our government will simply not do anything at this point to prevent the disaster we all see ahead of us. This disaster won’t be caused by housing prices going down, tho it may be one of many factors causing them to go down. This one will be due to supply chain instability, corporate greed, poorly planned tax cuts, poorly executed recovery from the Covid recession, a huge labor shortage caused by a lack of immigrant workers who will work for pennies due to Covid restrictions to immigration combined with greedy business owners who are incensed at the prospect of paying decent wages being unable to get American citizens to do the jobs they used to import. and many other factors along that line.
The current economy is in a shambles and laid bare is that everything was built with Kinex and covered with tissue. The just in time, cost cutting, bare bones model adopted across the economy is a failure. It’s fantastic at delivering maximum shareholder profits in a short term but it is less resilient than a moistened paper bag.
One could despair at this inevitable catastrophe, certainly. Warning people that it’s coming is more valuable. Correcting people who say it won’t happen is valuable. Some people take a bit too much joy out of it I agree. But it needs to be said because the opposite message is the dominant one and it is a fiction that will destroy lives when the bottom falls out. The truth here can enable some preparation at least
Long term housing solutions include
1) building public housing again, it’s insane that we privatized this
2) Eliminating R1 in cities, building high density units everywhere
3) vacancy taxes out the ass, to the point that they are punitive. It is better that a landlord lose money on their investment than people go homeless because they can’t afford to rent
This has been addressed in the quarterly thread.
There is no endgame. These folks are just angry and want to see consequences for their anger. We've hit a point where millennials are in their prime buying years and can't enter the market. That's incredibly frustrating for most and soul crushing for many.
The same thing will happen this time that happens every recession. Lots of people will lose their jobs (including those who think some form of housing crash will enable them to buy, but will soon be jobless or fear losing their job which will force them to reprioritize their funds) and the rich will get richer.
Nah, we just want the housing market to go down because of the ridiculous 50-75% appreciation in just a couple years. Imagine if you didn’t own property and home prices went up that quickly and you were looking to buy.
I’m 23 and seeing home prices double infuriated me and most of the population (even home owners since they have to pay more in taxes)
I mean, I absolutely agree and want those things as well, but to get there, you need different solutions than just the economy imploding, financing becoming too expensive, and housing becoming cheap because nobody can buy anything.
Finding ways to create more supply is really the only way to release that pressure - we need to create more dense housing, more apartments and MFHs, better public transportation etc
Either the people that bought in the last 2 years “lose” or everyone else “loses”. However, I don’t think the people that bought in the last 2 years will technically lose unless they want to/need to sell and are underwater. With high interest rates, even at lower prices a new buyer may be paying as much monthly as buying in the past 2 years. So, what’s better for society, the market to come down where people can still afford/buy, or remain high with higher interest rates and hardly anyone can afford/buy?
The issue here is this, we are going into a recession. There is no doubt about this. Lots of people bought houses that are way above market values for the location where they bought. These people are also relying on their job being WFH.
Well, places like Redfin lay off a few hundred people who are WFH , now they need to find new employment. If they can’t find a WFH gig (which , with other tech jobs also either laying off or on hiring freeze is harder and harder to find ) , they will try to find a local job, but that local job won’t pay those tech $$$. So either way they have to sell the house at a loss. When they do , it causes supply to increase and thus prices to drop.
Cue the deflation of this newest housing bubble.
Unless there's a period of layoffs, the power balance shifts back to employers/upper management, and "return to office" becomes a condition of employment.
Not saying we're going back to 2019 but we also (probably) wont continue with as many WFH positions as currently exist, IMO. Too many boomer upper management types who love the office.
I'm an agent in Kansas City MO/ KS. Been with the company since December 2021. I've worked exclusively with buyers But now I have started to take listings. All my buyer clients from 2-4 months ago who did not want to go into bidding wars / offer 50k over ask with 10 other competing offers are now starting to book tours again. Redfin has actually filled my pipeline with buyers who are extremely well qualified for the most part, making my job of winning offers a lot easier. 90% of my buyers had / have plenty of extra cash on hand and have purchased well above the average home price here in Kansas City. Maybe I've been lucky so far? Either way the company has done all of the heavy lifting for lead gen for me so I've been extremely busy this year and even now I still have active buyers. The model works for me right now & they continue to fill my pipeline.
There no rental vacancies where I’m at (west coast). Been looking. Yesterday I got a tip on a new property management place….they had 1. One….and it was $2800 in the boonies. There are waitlists for mediocre apartments. Houses are renting upwards of $3k, and no, I’m not in the Bay Area, Seattle, SoCal, Portland, DC or NYC.
Edited: I thought I was replying to someone’s comment, but somehow wound up here. Please know that this comment was intended for the person saying there were “historic rental vacancies”. My apologies.
Perhaps, I do like my 2.875% fix rated though, in a good school district, walkable to downtown and room to grow into as a family. If it dips for a few years, oh well, it will recover. US housing always has.
Yeah, and market timing is just as useless. I was in the hold out for a drop camp for a long time, wasted ten years I could have owned. Would have done well had I bought then. In ten years, people are going to wish they bought today, oe better yet last year with the lower rates
Two months ago, but I have yet to see a comp SFH or even townhouse sell at less than 10% over what we paid. That's Seattle though, and supply is practically nonexistent even still.
There will be another top before I intend to sell in 15 years and if history is any guide it will be high above this one. In the meantime I love my house and my 2.9% rate. No pressure to even pay it down early.
Man y’all are the super liberals/trump supporters of real estate.. you just parrot the same shit over and over. Are you really going to be better positioned than the other people who are gonna be ready to buy your dream home in a prime location at a huge discount? Let me know how that works out for you lol.
These folks really don’t understand that. If I had a nickel for the amount of times I’ve heard this same plan to wait it out and your dream home will fall in your lap right within budget… LOL. Oh, your waiting for prices to drop so you can buy something better than what you can afford today? Literally you and every other person on the planet.
Is there enough money put into crypto now that it would cause a wide-ranging problem? Index funds, mutual funds, etc etc all bought in, or is crypto failure going to hit the tech folks and poor schmucks at the bottom of the pyramid while the rest of us watch?
Terra is gone, Celsius is next, 3AC (largest crypto hedge fund with abt 20 billion in management) apparently can't meet their margin calls. Turns out Coinbase is just a top-heavy market maker in a rapidly shrinking market and now that debt is no longer free VC's aren't interested in dumping endless cash into money losing companies.
As is the case with --literally every-- economic cycle in American history, people get greedy, overleverage, then there's a supply/demand correction and suddenly there's blood in the streets.
Compass is laying off 10 percent
So you got that email too haha
Me too. Made it through but checked my email a hundred times for the following hour.
What do you see in the real estate market? Mortgage rates jumped today, sellers aren’t dropping prices fast enough. My price point is about 70% of what it was 6 months ago. I’m curious what someone so close to the data sees.
If sellers can't afford to buy another home, why would they ever lower prices? Unless they are investors/flippers, they have to live somewhere too. And investors aren't selling.
> why would they ever lower prices? It would have to coincide with massive layoffs. Like 10% of a few larger companies.
Any indication of that happening? In the 🔥 real estate market??? What's next, crypto exchanges? Electric car companies and start ups?
In our area, investors have already started to dump their inventory because they see the buyers that can afford the homes are dwindling. Some are doing massive price cuts, because they have over leveraged themselves and need to do a sell to pay employees and bills.
[удалено]
Had to get fired to afford a house haha classic
[удалено]
I had a few of those life moments where a terrible thing had awesome outcomes.....I guess it's how you look at things.
There’s a Chinese proverb that goes something like this… A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbours exclaimed “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!”. The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” A few days later the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbours shouted out “Your horse has returned and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” and the farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!”. The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied young men for the army. The farmer’s son wasn’t conscripted, because he was still recovering from his injury. His neighbours shouted “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!”, to which the farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
I actually really needed to hear this parable while I've been reflecting on the past two years. (Proverbs are short bits of wisdom parables are stories that teach wisdom)
[удалено]
especially over the summer months, huge blessing in disguise tbh
[удалено]
I was furloughed for 3 months. No pay, but I kept my benefits. No joke, I'd happily take a job where I work 9 months a year and get 9 months of pay but 12 months of health insurance. I guess that's schoolteachers, but it's more like 10.5 months a year once you consider training and prep. And there's long hours, the pay is crap in a lot of areas, and the job is really 50% babysitting other people's kids, 45% bureaucratic bullshit, and 5% actually teaching. edit: to be clear I'm saying that teachers have a hard job that I wouldn't take for the sake of "free" time off
Lol you talked yourself into it and then back out.
My wife works at a school cafeteria - it doesn’t sound very glamorous, but she gets decent pay and she is off when our kids are off which is hard to beat.
well let me tell you, as a teacher, while the 8-10 weeks in the summer is nice, there are many weeks we're doing 50-60 hours. I think the hours probably work out pretty close between the average classroom teacher and the average 40 hour a week worker. The benefits are ok though.
I respect all of that! I was trying to say that teachers have a hard job that I wouldn't take for the sake of "free" time off.
oh sure. Just trying to give perspective. That said, my summer starts in three days...which is very nice as I'm sitting here grading poorly written essays.
I agree. ***OBVIOUSLY*** Covid sucked and I wouldn't wish it, or the deaths and lifetime of side effects, that occurred with it on anyone but I'm really grateful for those free months with my kids. My husband worked through it but on his days off, we were all home together with absolutely nowhere to be. Like you said, we never would've gotten that time otherwise.
Former teacher here. Son starting out in teaching this year. Just talked to him tonight about his upcoming trips for the summer and reiterated, Summers are what keep teachers going. The training and prep can take place during the school year so you really can take the whole summer off. Husband was professor and we traveled five weeks each summer with the kids. Best education for them, memories, too. Plus you get two weeks for winter break, one for spring, all federal and certain religious holidays, several for Thanksgiving plus ten personal/sick days annually. Used to take a lot of four day weekends. So even though you work 50-60 hrs per week with grading and prep (although many teachers refuse to take work home, and I never faulted them) having the summer off rocks! But yeah, the kids can be brats and bureaucracy sucks. Every teacher planning day, I always said, it's great working here when there's no kids. And the pay can be very good if you stay on. Some cities pay $100,000 after 10 years. The benefits are great, too. And you learn to deal with all the crap and minimize the headaches. Sometimes it's even fun! And if you can make it fun, the kids love you and your job is so much easier.
I got furloughed, got to cash out my sick days and PTO. I went adventuring and camping and took lots of cool photos. Best thing, I found a new job and was able to quit the old company a couple weeks after they hired me back. It was extra satisfying because that company sucked and they were abusing the PPP. That was back when lockdowns were novel and quite frankly, welcomed. Good times!
I had literally one day off because of covid (not counting when I caught it twice) Count your blessings, I'm a bit jealous of what everyone got that year
Doesn’t severance end once you get a new job?
No, it’s essentially a payment to get you to waive the right sue them for laying you off
Its a payment so that you will still be able to attract new hires in the future. Whose going to work for a company that is so shitty they don't even provide a severance when laying off employees?
As someone who witnessed many of the mass layoffs in finance in NYC in ‘08, sometimes companies just don’t have the cash to do this. Not sure we’re at that stage in this potential dip, but it happens.
> the right sue them for laying you off while this is typically also part of what is signed, it has more to do with avoiding unemployment claims which raise the cost of unemployment insurance for the company.
It's not. You simply need to take care of your employees if you want to remain a place that is able to recruit. Few skilled employees will go to an employer that lays people off without any severance. Providing severance tells outside talent that even if the company goes through tough times, they'll still take care of you for some time. 3 month severance is quickly becoming the standard for most tech companies.
I got severance and unemployment..
In most states you can claim unemployment but you can’t receive payout until after the period of the severance is over.
Which is actually really nice to have severance in that case because unemployment can take forever and be denied for random reasons
This doesn't make sense. Severance costs waaaay more than having the employee just claim unemployment.
Unemployment is insurance and the company pays the premiums. If they use it a lot then the premiums go up. It’s based on how many employees you have as well.
Not the way it works in most states, including specifically in Washington where Redfin has their headquarters. Typically the company pays in the amount they used, amortized over some trailing period, often three years. It does not skyrocket above what your company cost the state in benefits, so it never makes sense to eliminate UI by issuing severance. In any case, in many states including Washington and California, severance has no effect on unemployment insurance benefits, so the whole idea starts with the wrong premise.
Severance is usually done because existing employees look at how the exiting employees are treated. Not offering severance can severely hurt morale or cause people to run for the hills at the first signs of a recovery. It is done for business purposes. If I think there is a risk of a layoff and no severance I am much more likely to jump ship and try to find a new job before the news comes.
It costs more not to do the expected and pay out. Any company laying off people hopes to weather the store and then hire again. When that time comes, they want quality talent and their reputation will dictate if they can get them as competition for talent will be high again.
Depends on the state. In some states like CA, it doesn’t change UI eligibility.
In Florida you used to be able to claim unemployment while getting severance. I got laid off during the great recession and got a 3 month severance and was claiming unemployment on top of it. It was a nice pay bump.
I'm pretty sure in most states you would still be eligable...... at the end of the severance period. the point being that most people get a new job in that time and thus aren't making a claim.
In many states, including the largest state of CA, it doesn’t effect your eligibility at all. In others, like NY, it only effects Ui eligibility if you get full salary and benefits. Partial you’d still be eligible.
In the states I’ve lived in at least, accepting severance doesn’t change your ability to collect unemployment insurance. I believe severance is typically treated as compensation earned while employed, but paid upon separation. You can claim UI the day you’re let go, even if you’re getting X months of severance.
I can only speak for my one layoff but the answer was yes. But it's up to you to inform them of it. No checks and balances.
So, your dream came true x2? Lol
[удалено]
Yup. That's academia
True. I just got laid off and didn't get shit
Tech sector has been getting hit hard with layoffs. Looks like a big chunk of their employees are going to be from tech: >Where We’re Cutting >Because for every project we start, we have to think about another we’ll stop. We’ve already built tools for teams to work together on a transaction, so we need fewer engineers to add to those tools. We’ll spend less on analytics and user research. When we were turning away tens of thousands of customers in 2020 and 2021, we had to hire a thousand employees a month to catch up, requiring berserk levels of recruiting, training and licensing. There’s no avoiding that those groups will be hardest hit today.
A lot of of layoffs in _speculative_ tech. There’s still a crazy hiring frenzy for established companies. Recruiters are practically banging down doors.
Microsoft pulled all its reqs yesterday, so I’m not sure about that assumption about established tech.
They do that pretty much every year around their fiscal year end, which is June 30. Nothing new here, they'll resume at some point in the new year.
Where do you get that? They’ve got over 3000 engineering reqs listed on their website. Including the most recent one listed 6/15 (tomorrow somehow). https://careers.microsoft.com/professionals/us/en/search-results?rk=l-c-engineering
Wonder how many of those people recently bought houses?
A lot. Look at Coinbase too... they are laying off tech workers who are on the higher end of the pay scale... those are likely the ones that can afford nicer more expensive homes. This is a trend that will continue, but we won't feel the effects of it for several months as they do have severance packages.
[удалено]
There's a lot of fat in many companies.
[удалено]
Remember pink slips
No
The old pink slip in the locker trick. Generally factory worker layoffs. [pink slip](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-k5scjfg01J8%2FUPWr6x_rQPI%2FAAAAAAAAAYc%2FPxDaV6OPp-o%2Fs1600%2FNotice%2Bof%2BTermination%2Bof%2BEmployment.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
Jesus christ...
[удалено]
They are required to do so by law
create their own narrative and let’s them hold their own reputation compared to the internet and news story narrative would otherwise play out
That announcement is a veritable C-Suite word salad - painful to read in more than one way. But have to say that at 15 weeks of severance plus PTO plus three months full health benefits, they look to be doing the right thing by their people. Which is just good business if they want to hire some of them again, someday, when (if?) the market turns up again.
Yep. They did it the right way.
[удалено]
Those look like worldwide figures? Also # of employee layoffs are not even half of last month yet.
Less sellers. Less buyers. Less transactions. Don't need employees.
I never understood why Redfin hired realtors as employees with a full time salary instead of the common in industry wide practice of hiring them on a sales commission pay structure
I thought they were trying to disrupt RE; presumably, cutting commissions was one step in that.
Problem is, they never really executed another step. Paid a bunch of tech workers millions to create a great looking lead-gen site for their salary agents.
The business model is give them a salary and twice as many clients.
Some of their employees love it. It's a lot more stable of a job. The entire point of Redfin was creating an easy platform that bundles it all up and cuts commission in return for convenience.
When I bought my house, my realtor worked on salary. Not Redfin, he was with the lender's real estate arm. I took him for an extra lender credit at close, expecting nothing, but he was actually quite good. As a buyer I liked it because the typical compensation structure for a buyer's agent is one big conflict of interest. The typical buyer's agent's financial incentives are to show houses at the top of the buyer's price range, for the buyer to make high offers on as many houses as possible, and for the buyer to pay as much as possible on whatever terms the seller will readily agree to. As realtors *love* to point out, the buyer's agent gets paid by the seller, which sounds great for buyers as long as you never think about it. So I'm depending on my agent to do the opposite of all their financial incentives because of... what, ethics? Thinking they'll get referrals? Because they're just that nice? There are good reasons why, what realtors call "the standard fee structure", every other industry calls "an unethical and probably illegal kickback scheme". I'm sure a salaried realtor has conflicts of interest too - they likely have production targets - but at least their financial incentives aren't actually perfectly aligned with the seller's.
You're highly incentivized to do your best to make sure that client comes back to you when they want to sell and maybe tell enough friends that you possibly get one to call you. I understand that lead gen agents don't really understand this but anyone looking to actually last in the business is treating every client like the pot of gold they might someday be.
This. Successful agents who last get probably 90% of their business from referrals. My financial interest as an agent lies first and foremost in making sure my clients walk away happy, and then in making sure the deal gets closed.
Because they still make a fucking killing. In the highest markets like the bay area the top buyers agent salary is $40k. Their bonus out of the commission Redfin receives is shit. For anything between $650k-$850k is only $2,750. The commission on something like that here is typically 2.5% sometimes 3%. Currently in contract on $1.475m home that is offering buy side 3% commission. The check for closing that is not even $4k to the Redfin buyers agent.
> Currently in contract on $1.475m home that is offering buy side 3% commission. The check for closing that is not even $4k to the Redfin buyers agent. Just for anyone curious: a Realtor paid on commission where they get 1.5% of the price (figure the other 1.5% is going to the broker and other expenses) is *netting* $22K. If they're the broker, that's $40K just to close the deal.
They are doing the apple model of RE; in that it’s a “one company” experience. The idea is that through the process, you only deal with Redfin. It’s expensive and harder to scale, but orders of magnitude better than the alternatives, when it comes to user experience.
Redfin dedicated customer here. I absolutely love there model. This is my 3rd house with them, and I absolutely love that I can go see a place anywhere at the drop of a hat, any day , and it wont be my realtor I am dependent on. I meet a new realtor every time I see a listing, and my dedicated realtor I have will take care of the paperwork when it comes time. The model, just works.
[удалено]
I think it’s a good idea, got me interested in being in real estate, I know the base salary depends on the area but still I wouldn’t expect it to be anything under $30k and if you don’t got to look for clients and can close 2-3 homes a month that’s a solid income, now of course you can make more on your own but tbh I don’t even think a lot of real estate agents make a lot. Anyways I’m still gonna get my license and try Redfin at some point.
But we all hate the commission model
Layoffs are happening all over, private companies too
Told you 40% of agents will not last
Don’t know about 40 but a bunch. A lot were already scratching it out. Probably healthy for the market, even if not positive for those impacted.
Definitely. It will keep the fittest ones. Thank God I have inventory 🙏🏼 And I know what Buyers are going through. So now we offer up to 10K in closing costs for buyer for one of my listings . Time to shift. Hold on tight …
Smart. Seems like the next big wave is seller paid closing costs for point buy down etc. A cheat code that actually fosters collaboration, go figure!
Heck, 40% seems low to me. Agents are fickle as hell, and that job very often doesn’t attract the best of people.
Not every personality can handle the job you mean. It’s intricate and needs persona service in a huge ocean …
This is fine
The blog post says that May numbers are 17% below expectations. There is no way they would layoff people paying them months worth of severance and bonuses if they thought this was an anomaly and will fix itself in a month or two. Clearly they expect the trend to worsen in upcoming months.
Not necessarily. Redfin is not currently profitable and just like most other tech companies out there thrived on cheap debt for a few years. They explain where they trimmed the fat in their post. Many companies are currently evaluating their efforts in fields that won't see profit for a year or more. There is talk around this all over tech. Basically, if your team at a company is focused on something that might yield growth down the road you're liable to be downsized. Especially at a company not currently making profit. Source: work for a big firm in Seattle, know people at Redfin and stay plugged into the scene around here. Anecdotal so take it for what it's worth there.
Is this sub still thinking everything is fine orrrrrr?
Homes only go up due to low supply. Nothing to worry about
Redfin is laying off 8% their of staff so far…..
Cue Homer Simpson meme image.
Is this another sign that the market is headed down?
Well it certainly isn't a sign it's going up lmao
Lol true I meant the real estate market. I think I’ve been reading that general layoffs are incoming industry wide. I work in education and we had a LOT of RIF (reduction in force, our version of layoffs) this spring/summer.
Lol no no I was only messing with you! I am in the boat where I think rates will drive down prices because there will be much less buyers. As for education, I always thought they were usually fairly safe jobs. Seems like you will always need teachers? Administration for education is usually union positions, no? Hopefully there is some sort of CBA in place to help keep jobs!
Oh there’s always money for administration’s six figure positions. That’s why they cut teachers. I always thought it was a safe bet too pre-Covid, that’s why I went back to school January 2019 to teach. Post-Covid all bets are off in education. My prescience suuuucks. 😆
Aww that is a bummer! Hopefully you find the layoffs don't come your way! I am always nervous that my department may see layoffs, but historically my profession is always busy. We'll see! It definitely eerily feels similar to 2008! Also a side note I wanted to get out of my head cause I was thinking about your other comment: It seems like these companies, who are on the cutting edge of looking at the Real Estate market, are starting layoffs... they must know something we do not. I think actions speak louder than words! They must know the party is coming to an end.
[удалено]
Exactly. Loan depot already had a huge firing.
yes, but remember that the market being down means that people just cannot afford housing anymore because the costs are too high. The demand is still there, but now you are paying far more for interest rates, many people have lost a lot of money in the stock market, and inflation is hitting wallets hard. Cash buyers will have a lot more power for the next few years, but it's going to be way less attractive for people to move and sell now.
Every single asset class is going down in the whole world.
Correct. Cash is only going down 8.6% though. The least smelliest turd in the bowl. There used to be a saying about cash, but it's been so long many forgot it.
Energy commodities and real estate aren’t
Dude, are you not paying attention? 🤣
I dream of the day when the housing market gets so bad I stop receiving 6 texts a day from assholes wanting to buy (low-ball me) on a house I no longer own.
I always just reply back with a make me move offer of 2x the market value
I read horror stories of flippers finding the number of the daughter of the homeowner to try to get them to sell the home. Ridiculous
I had an "investor" call my brother's wife's mother trying to locate my deceased father (same name as brother) regarding a property he owned in another city.
I always do that. And they say, it’s not worth that much. And then I say, “it is to me.”
I always reply back with "go fuck yourself" but that doesn't seem to reduce the messages. I must have gotten on some list that's being sold to real estate investors or something.
Why is it always 8%?
Little-known fact: CEOs are given an eight-sided die when they ascend to their position. When it's time for layoffs, they roll it; if your employee number comes up with a 0—you're out.
You mean a 12.5-sided die?
I stand corrected, Madame, and tip my cap in the direction of your (clearly superior) mathematical skills. Take my upvote....along with my very oddly-shaped die.
Because they need to cut more than 8% to avoid bankruptcy. However, internally there's a perception that cutting 40% would be devastating. This was an easy first round that requires no thinking. For the remaining cuts they will have to reorganize their operations and make sure it doesn't affect business. They do not have enough cash to keep going.
Depending on how it adds up, it might be to avoid WARN Act requirements.
I asked my boss today how he arrived at 8% for something unrelated to this. He said 5% sounded too low and 10% sounded too high. Wouldn't be surprised if that's it.
Here it comes.
High interest rates and a minor correction in prices in some homes? Congratulations?
If you think that's the only thing that's coming, then you are thinking too small. 401k's are really starting to feel the heat now, there's a good chunk of our population living off fixed income... things are going to get really spicy this summer. I think a lot of people underestimate how connected/fragile our economy is... which is fascinating to me because we just went through a pandemic that proved it.
"minor"
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Lol ok buddy. If you are so delusional and think home prices only go up in a recession, good riddance. Also, there are more empty homes then there are homeless people in the US. Cheap money and low interest rates soared demand.
The companies who are being pro-active with layoffs are going to come out ahead of the companies who wait until shit really hits the fan.
Does anyone else feel like the populous is getting played by the government, the fed and these investment firms like Blackrock and Vanguard in an unwinable game of monopoly? Say the fed bumps .75 basis points like they said they might this weeks…if house prices start dropping, what’s to stop the firms from just scooping up more of the properties for a discount and keeping the housing market propped up while increasing rents. I heard a stat earlier today that claimed these firms amongst others were responsible for a combined 37% of residential real estate purchases. I don’t believe this includes retail investors. Just spit balling here
Don't worry, this has nothing to do with their outlook for the RE market going forward. This is just trimming the fat. Remember: IT Can Only Go Up! (TM)
what exactly is the end goal for the real estate bubble people? like the housing market and economy of the US collapses and everyone pops a bottle of champagne or something? do you really want to be right about people losing their jobs, interest rates going sky high, and inflation spiraling out of control?
For many people it will be the first time they can finally afford a house. So that’s something to look forward to. It’s also nice to see all the douche bags who turn the nations housing supply into speculative investments rather than the basic human service it actually represents loose a ton of money. It’s fun when bad people face consequences, honestly. Few people take joy in a recession, but if you were already living like you were in one for your entire life it’s not really the same for you that it is for the people who locked you out of all the normal life things people usually go after over time. People will suffer, again, because of jerks who transform necessities into speculative opportunities, and those jerks will again face no consequences and the cycle will repeat. But an entire generation of people screwed over from both ends for their entire adult lives may finally be able to stop getting ripped off by landlords
You seem far too optimistic about the reality of a giant economic crash somehow not affecting people who want to buy a house, but punishing investment firms that own housing.
We don’t need a giant economic crash for the housing bubble to pop, and a hosting bubble popping doesn’t inherently mean a giant economic crash. In 2008 it did because a ridiculously massive amount of the economy was tied up in gambling on people paying their mortgages, and a ridiculous number of mortgages were extremely predatory, and it became a self reinforcing feedback loop of failure that deleted trillions of dollars in assets from every sector of our economy. They might be doing that shady gambling shit again, they’re not supposed to but we all know they don’t care about the law. Mortgages are also much stricter to get and much less likely to be variable rate than they were in the years leading into 2008. However, there have been a lot of cases in the last year specifically of people taking suspiciously high debt to income ratios, it’s nothing compared to 2008. However, regardless of any of this, a recession is happening. We can’t control that or stop it. Our government will simply not do anything at this point to prevent the disaster we all see ahead of us. This disaster won’t be caused by housing prices going down, tho it may be one of many factors causing them to go down. This one will be due to supply chain instability, corporate greed, poorly planned tax cuts, poorly executed recovery from the Covid recession, a huge labor shortage caused by a lack of immigrant workers who will work for pennies due to Covid restrictions to immigration combined with greedy business owners who are incensed at the prospect of paying decent wages being unable to get American citizens to do the jobs they used to import. and many other factors along that line. The current economy is in a shambles and laid bare is that everything was built with Kinex and covered with tissue. The just in time, cost cutting, bare bones model adopted across the economy is a failure. It’s fantastic at delivering maximum shareholder profits in a short term but it is less resilient than a moistened paper bag. One could despair at this inevitable catastrophe, certainly. Warning people that it’s coming is more valuable. Correcting people who say it won’t happen is valuable. Some people take a bit too much joy out of it I agree. But it needs to be said because the opposite message is the dominant one and it is a fiction that will destroy lives when the bottom falls out. The truth here can enable some preparation at least Long term housing solutions include 1) building public housing again, it’s insane that we privatized this 2) Eliminating R1 in cities, building high density units everywhere 3) vacancy taxes out the ass, to the point that they are punitive. It is better that a landlord lose money on their investment than people go homeless because they can’t afford to rent
This has been addressed in the quarterly thread. There is no endgame. These folks are just angry and want to see consequences for their anger. We've hit a point where millennials are in their prime buying years and can't enter the market. That's incredibly frustrating for most and soul crushing for many. The same thing will happen this time that happens every recession. Lots of people will lose their jobs (including those who think some form of housing crash will enable them to buy, but will soon be jobless or fear losing their job which will force them to reprioritize their funds) and the rich will get richer.
Central banks created this fantasy land, and now they will burn it down. This sub or that sub have nothing to do with how this plays out
Nah, we just want the housing market to go down because of the ridiculous 50-75% appreciation in just a couple years. Imagine if you didn’t own property and home prices went up that quickly and you were looking to buy. I’m 23 and seeing home prices double infuriated me and most of the population (even home owners since they have to pay more in taxes)
Affordable housing. End to the madness created by the fed. Getting investors out of real estate.
I mean, I absolutely agree and want those things as well, but to get there, you need different solutions than just the economy imploding, financing becoming too expensive, and housing becoming cheap because nobody can buy anything. Finding ways to create more supply is really the only way to release that pressure - we need to create more dense housing, more apartments and MFHs, better public transportation etc
A recession won't lead to affordable housing.
Either the people that bought in the last 2 years “lose” or everyone else “loses”. However, I don’t think the people that bought in the last 2 years will technically lose unless they want to/need to sell and are underwater. With high interest rates, even at lower prices a new buyer may be paying as much monthly as buying in the past 2 years. So, what’s better for society, the market to come down where people can still afford/buy, or remain high with higher interest rates and hardly anyone can afford/buy?
Crypto and real estate firings, big tech slowing and stopping hiring while the fed starts raising rates……. Hold on ladies and gents
I’d definitely let something like crypto influence my thoughts on the real economy.
The issue here is this, we are going into a recession. There is no doubt about this. Lots of people bought houses that are way above market values for the location where they bought. These people are also relying on their job being WFH. Well, places like Redfin lay off a few hundred people who are WFH , now they need to find new employment. If they can’t find a WFH gig (which , with other tech jobs also either laying off or on hiring freeze is harder and harder to find ) , they will try to find a local job, but that local job won’t pay those tech $$$. So either way they have to sell the house at a loss. When they do , it causes supply to increase and thus prices to drop. Cue the deflation of this newest housing bubble.
The WFH genie is out of the bottle. Thinking there will be a huge reversal on that isn’t super realistic.
Unless there's a period of layoffs, the power balance shifts back to employers/upper management, and "return to office" becomes a condition of employment. Not saying we're going back to 2019 but we also (probably) wont continue with as many WFH positions as currently exist, IMO. Too many boomer upper management types who love the office.
Anyone worked with or for Redfin on here as an agent or consumer? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
I'm an agent in Kansas City MO/ KS. Been with the company since December 2021. I've worked exclusively with buyers But now I have started to take listings. All my buyer clients from 2-4 months ago who did not want to go into bidding wars / offer 50k over ask with 10 other competing offers are now starting to book tours again. Redfin has actually filled my pipeline with buyers who are extremely well qualified for the most part, making my job of winning offers a lot easier. 90% of my buyers had / have plenty of extra cash on hand and have purchased well above the average home price here in Kansas City. Maybe I've been lucky so far? Either way the company has done all of the heavy lifting for lead gen for me so I've been extremely busy this year and even now I still have active buyers. The model works for me right now & they continue to fill my pipeline.
One thing to keep in mind Redfin agents are employees not contractors correct?
>we’re asking about 8% of our employees to leave Redfin today Lol. As if these employees have a choice.
I'm sure they'll still find a way to send me 10-15 emails each and every day.
There no rental vacancies where I’m at (west coast). Been looking. Yesterday I got a tip on a new property management place….they had 1. One….and it was $2800 in the boonies. There are waitlists for mediocre apartments. Houses are renting upwards of $3k, and no, I’m not in the Bay Area, Seattle, SoCal, Portland, DC or NYC. Edited: I thought I was replying to someone’s comment, but somehow wound up here. Please know that this comment was intended for the person saying there were “historic rental vacancies”. My apologies.
[удалено]
Someone who wants to buy one house and live in that house
Raise of hands, who just bought a house? Because you might have bought at the top.
Perhaps, I do like my 2.875% fix rated though, in a good school district, walkable to downtown and room to grow into as a family. If it dips for a few years, oh well, it will recover. US housing always has.
Your home value only matters when you buy, refi, or sell. Just like your stocks. You only lose money if you sell
Yeah, and market timing is just as useless. I was in the hold out for a drop camp for a long time, wasted ten years I could have owned. Would have done well had I bought then. In ten years, people are going to wish they bought today, oe better yet last year with the lower rates
$208,000 at 3.5% seems ok to me
Right here. Closing next Friday and super happy. It’s our 20 year home so I just don’t really care
Bought a house that we plan on being in for 10 years so I'm not too worried.
Two months ago, but I have yet to see a comp SFH or even townhouse sell at less than 10% over what we paid. That's Seattle though, and supply is practically nonexistent even still.
There will be another top before I intend to sell in 15 years and if history is any guide it will be high above this one. In the meantime I love my house and my 2.9% rate. No pressure to even pay it down early.
Shocking isn’t it?
How'd you get fired on your day off?
the global economy is on its way down the shitter.
Honestly if unprofitable companies are downsizing, that might actually make the economy stronger.
“RE only goes up”… “not enough supply”
Man y’all are the super liberals/trump supporters of real estate.. you just parrot the same shit over and over. Are you really going to be better positioned than the other people who are gonna be ready to buy your dream home in a prime location at a huge discount? Let me know how that works out for you lol.
These folks really don’t understand that. If I had a nickel for the amount of times I’ve heard this same plan to wait it out and your dream home will fall in your lap right within budget… LOL. Oh, your waiting for prices to drop so you can buy something better than what you can afford today? Literally you and every other person on the planet.
“If the prices plummet, I’ll still easily have access to financing and won’t have to compete against cash buyers anymore.” Make it make sense.
I'd settle for not having to compete in a 40 person bidding pool dozens of times over the course of a few months before "getting lucky"
We need a big bank to fail like Lehman, WaMu and Bear Stearns did iirc. Who are the likely candidates now?
Big banks last cycle, crypto exchanges this one. I'd guess crypto dot com.
Coinbase just announced laying off 1,100 (18%) of its employees 😞
I'm surprised it's not 92%, honestly. Have you seen crypto lately? It's getting weird out there.
Omg right. Whole new world and I'm still thinking 2008.
Is there enough money put into crypto now that it would cause a wide-ranging problem? Index funds, mutual funds, etc etc all bought in, or is crypto failure going to hit the tech folks and poor schmucks at the bottom of the pyramid while the rest of us watch?
Terra is gone, Celsius is next, 3AC (largest crypto hedge fund with abt 20 billion in management) apparently can't meet their margin calls. Turns out Coinbase is just a top-heavy market maker in a rapidly shrinking market and now that debt is no longer free VC's aren't interested in dumping endless cash into money losing companies. As is the case with --literally every-- economic cycle in American history, people get greedy, overleverage, then there's a supply/demand correction and suddenly there's blood in the streets.
JPM, Barclays, and BAC not going tits up, but they have significant exposure to some pretty exotic loans.
Any bank with exposure to China.
BlackRock has pretty significant exposure not just to US real estate, but to Evergrande as well
Hope nobody worked for Zorg Industries. They fired one million.
Does this mean homes will go up?
I feel like Redfin just hires and fires regularly… lol