A St. Louis-based startup connecting home buyers and sellers with real estate agents is the latest player in the housing market to make cuts in response to economic uncertainty.
Clever Real Estate has laid off an undisclosed number of employees from its customer service and editorial teams, a spokesperson confirmed on Friday. The company touts a 1% listing fee for sellers and up to 0.5% cash back for buyers, and recently said it was on track to sell $4 billion in property real estate in 2022.
The layoffs were made as Clever positions itself for growth in the slowing housing market, co-founder and CEO Luke Babich told the business newspaper. St. Louis Inno this week. Mortgage activity last week bottomed out not seen since 1997 with prices at the limit of 7%according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
In August, the company announced three executive hires and drove its growth despite market challenges that forced dozens of other companies to issue multiple rounds of layoffs.
“The company continues to post 10-20% month-over-month growth, defying headwinds in the real estate industry that have resulted in layoffs at many other companies,” reads a press release issued in August. by the Society.
Clever was founded in 2017 and boasts a network of 12,000 agents across the country. It has 122 employees, according to LinkedIn, a tally that includes part-time positions. The company announced an $8 million Series B funding round in December and total funding of $13.5 million.
Other major layoffs are also underway at Finance of America, which said it was ending its term mortgage business, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission. disclosure filed Friday afternoon.
The cuts follow an already tumultuous year for the major lender, which announced earlier this month that it end its wholesale operations by December 16. Finance of America has already announced that it will quit its direct-to-consumer channel and attempted to sell its retail operations at Guaranteed Rate in a deal that fell apart earlier this month.
The company, after its second-quarter net loss of $168 million, said it would implement layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to save more than $100 million this year. It has not yet announced when it will release its third quarter results.
Other real estate competitors cutting payrolls this month include property appraisals and platform technology provider Clear Capital, which let go 27% of its workforce, and the Lower Ohio-based fintech lender, which cut an undisclosed number employees. Servicer Roundpoint, which was purchased by Matrix Financial Services in August of Freedom Mortgage, will also lay off 74 employees next week.