US mortgage lenders, refinancing companies and real-estate brokers may lay off thousands of employees in the coming months, industry sources said, as many Americans put off buying a home.
Low interest rates, stimulus payments and working from home during the coronavirus pandemic had prompted many millennials to hunt for new homes, fuelling a red-hot US housing market.
But the market is now cooling amid economic uncertainty resulting from the Ukraine conflict and a jump in mortgage rates as the Federal Reserve raises the cost of borrowing.
“We’re seeing a reduction in buyer interest because of the cost of buying home and that’s due to both the run up in interest rates as well as the ongoing high cost of actually building a home,” said Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.
US existing home sales tumbled to a two-year low in May but the median house price rose 14.8 percent from a year earlier to an all-time high of $407,600, passing $400,000 for the first time.
Ratings agency Fitch expects new home sales this year to fall 2 percent, compared to its earlier forecast of a 1.8 percent rise.
The US housing industry, which employs hundreds of thousands of people, is responding by shrinking.
This month, real estate brokers Compass Inc and Redfin Corp both announced hundreds of job cuts.
And as the rate for the most popular US home loan nears its highest level since November 2008, the effects may spread to mortgage companies as demand for refinancing wanes.
JPMorgan Chase & Co, the largest US lender, has started laying off employees in its mortgage arm, citing “cyclical changes in the mortgage market”.
More than 1,000 employees would be affected by the move with about half of them moving to different divisions within the bank, a source familiar with the matter said.
Executives at mortgage firm loanDepotInc said in an earnings call last month that they were expecting to cut headcount to manage costs as market volumes drop. A source at Ally Financial Inc said it was focusing on “prudent and essential hiring only”.
Both firms added about 1,000 employees last year.
“There is almost no incentive to refinance. So that drop off in business, in addition to our view of slowing (home) sales, suggests there will need to be layoffs across the industry,” Douglas Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae, said.
