Rocket Mortgage to trim 8% of workforce as home-loan market shrinks

I imagine that Rocket increased their workforce by more than 8% between spring of 2020 and now. I work for a mortgage company and layoffs have happened multiple times this year. With rates so low for almost two years the volume increased significantly. In order to deal with that volume the company most certainly had to hire many people and quick. The market conditions can't support keeping those individuals (or at least the number of positions that were added) during the pandemic. People who work the operations jobs (who are behind the scenes helping the loan officer close loans) know the market is cyclical and know that layoffs are a part of the business.

Seems like the bubble burst is going to be more sudden than we thought. 30 year mortgages are suddenly at nearly 5.5-6%, listings are sitting on the market for longer, and multiple cities are cracking down on Airbnb.

Just closed financing on a home. Rocket had a comparable rate but the real no-go for us was their very-limited rate-lock option. With interest rate trends what they are right now, we really needed a 200 day + rate lock with a float-down in case things changed. Other lenders (builder, ownup options, local banks) offered those and the option to buy points and apply them if we were able to float down. Rocket seemed very slow to adjust to the market forces with competitive options.

I won't feel one ounce of pity for the "investors" who lose their shirts when this bubble finally pops. We should regulate investors almost entirely out of housing. Yes, there is still a need for people with lots of capital to go in and repair dilapidated homes. But we don't need people hoarding homes and renting them out as AirBnbs.

This is actually a good thing. House cycles exist and it&#x27;s better to have smaller, more frequent ones than massive ones like 2008.<p>Canada never had a 2008 housing crash. Housing has been on a tear since the early 2000&#x27;s and the average sale price of a home (nationally) is 2x that of the US despite lower salaries, higher taxes and a lack of 30-year fixed rates.<p><i>That</i> is a bubble. My opinion is the US market is <i>hot</i>, but not a bubble. It could turn into one, but if this is a real correction, the fear of a bubble is much less.

Has anyone actually used Rocket? Every time I (or a friend) have looked at them they have higher closing costs and wanted multiple points to close the mortgage.<p>I was able to do way, way better by going with a local bank, as did my friends.<p>The only thing I can figure is they are better for folks with &quot;good&quot; (not &quot;excellent&quot;) credit and can maybe close the loan faster.

I use to be a shareholder of Rocket. Then I tried to get a mortgage with them.<p>I&#x27;m self-employed. I make about 200k&#x2F;year. I had 0 debt (I paid off my house the prior year). I had 20% for up to 350k. I had an 812 credit score.<p>When I applied they asked for my P&amp;R statements for 2 years. The current year showed a $400 deficit (which was due to charitable giving). They said that I was losing money.Therefore I was too great of a risk.<p>I explained to them why the numbers were $400 lowers. I told them that I already had another $20k in receivables. I told them my present house was on the market. All to no avail. I was too great of a risk.<p>It was at this point that I knew they had little idea how to work in the industry. If they turned me down, they were turning other stable individuals down. I promptly sold my shares and moved on.<p>The realtor of the condo I eventually purchased recommended a broker. They looked at the same info and laughed at Rocket. The new broker gladly took the loan.

I don’t have a good way to reconcile the current hot job market with seemingly increasing reports of mass layoffs, but one wonders if the graph will change directions decisively at some point soon.

Rocket, like other mortgage firms staffed up the last 3 years on processing roles. Those are the first positions you&#x27;re seeing let go with refinance volume falling off a cliff due to rising rates.<p>Also Rocket recently shifted their technology strategy to build fewer point solutions in house where there was an adequate market solution available, focusing more on customer facing technology to build in house.

My wife and I will be moving to Chicago soon and we intend on buying a house when we get there. How screwed are we by the current housing situation and interest rates?

Is this because individuals aren&#x27;t as interested in buying houses, or because investors are buying more of them (and don&#x27;t need financing)?

I&#x27;m kinda surprised to see so much commentary on this. A lot of folks on here deeply misunderstand this industry, which is understandable, but there&#x27;s a lot of very strident and incorrect opinion.<p>Simply put, one of the biggest mortgage booms in history just came to an end. Rates were at all-time lows. That meant an unbelievable boom in demand for mortgage refis.<p>Then when the Fed started taking inflation seriously, mortgage rates (which tend to track 2-3% above 10-year treasury yields) skyrocketed to 10-year highs. This means that very few people are in a position to benefit from a refi, and that business is pretty much dried up. The refi business is the specialty of Rocket Mortgage and other online lenders.<p>There is tremendous demand for housing right now, due to millenials being homebuying age and housing preferences changing with the pandemic. However, supply is tightly constrained. Boomers are aging in-place, home builders aren&#x27;t completing homes due to building supply and labor disruption, investors are buying properties (smaller effect than people claim), and sellers don&#x27;t want to sell without a home to buy. So for-sale inventory is at all time lows. This means less demand for purchase money mortgages, the main other product of a mortgage bank.<p>Mortgage lending is notoriously labor intensive. Nearly every lender, like Rocket, staffed up huge to meet the demand of the refi boom. Now, nearly every lender finds itself overstaffed for a mortgage market bust. Hence, layoffs. Every lender from the largest (Rocket) to the smallest is impacted.<p>This is just how the mortgage industry works, though. It is both seasonal and dependent on the economic cycle.

Rocket Mortgage has a pretty modern stack, and they make good use of third party API’s to aid their processing. There’s an entire fintech ecosystem that are providers for mortgage providers like Rocket Mortgage that could be impacted if this turns into a trend.

Makes sense. Nobody needs to refinance at these rates.

For what it’s worth I used them to refi my house before the rates rose. The banker I got was amazing. She handled everything beautifully. The only thing they weren’t set up to handle was notarizing my loan while I was overseas. But we figured that out.

Wow big week of lay-offs between this and Robinhood

They&#x27;re not needed, right? Investors buying a larger share of homes, so you wouldn&#x27;t need as many mortgage brokers, right? Also, some developers are simply building homes to go straight to rental property. They wouldn&#x27;t need Rocket mortgage to be involved.<p>I don&#x27;t think this is a sign of a bubble bursting but more of a sign that unless you currently own and can hang onto it, you&#x27;ll be a renter soon no matter your status.

I love how RM is working with the people they are laying off instead of just showing them the door.

These companies are not viable so it’s inevitable they collapse and people working there need to know such reality.

Buying a home mortgage is signing yourself over to a lifetime of servitude and uncertainty if you lose your income stream. Buy a property out of pocket to live in and make the most of a DIY life at a fraction of the cost and an odd stress differential, or just keep renting and be agile enough to roll with the punches.