[Panther34543]

Many folks here are talking about the CEO and how the termination process was carried out, but I'd like to know if this is any sort of indicator for where the housing market is going.

Zillow was just in the news for suddenly laying off about %25 of its employees and taking a ~$500m loss.

Do any of you believe these companies have insight into the near feature that indicates a notable downturn in the market?

[ragnot]

They probably just see that the Fed going to raise rates and realize that there are going to be less mortgages handed out which means less customers.

[Panther34543]

It's seems clear the Fed is going to raise rates at some point, but the question is "by how much".

I doubt the market will be affected too much if rates are increased yet stay below 4%. Many houses in my local market are selling in under a day; a small increase in mortgage rates won't tamper that demand to any great degree.

[colinmhayes]

Better is operating at a loss in order to give rates that are unmatched by the market. Rising rates means that less people will be refinancing since the markets rates are comparable to what they already have. Better has signaled they want to go public which means they're going to have to at least not lose as much money. This points to needing less support staff since they'll have much fewer customers.

[stjohnswarts]

Zillow did some really stupid stuff that caused them to need to trim the waist a bit.

[rossdavidh]

The answer to your question is "yes".