Pandemic Darlings The pandemic economy, in original documents
Home Profiles Redfin Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

Profiles · Companies and entities

ProfileCompany or group

Redfin Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

Other company

Unemployment insurance
Type
Company or group
Role
Other company
Programs
Unemployment insurance
Updated

The profile

On April 7, 2020 Redfin sent 41 percent of its agents home, most on furlough until September 1, and laid off 7 percent of its staff. Chief executive Glenn Kelman wrote that one reason for choosing furloughs was the federal government's $600 weekly addition to unemployment insurance: Redfin estimated that about 75 percent of the departing field staff lived in states where they could earn more from unemployment than from Redfin.

  • Category: real estate technology
  • Pandemic-layoff role: Additional sourced company
  • Last updated: 2026-09-25

Founders, executives and investors

Kelman has been chief executive since September 2005 and a director since March 2006, according to Redfin's annual report for 2024. Before Redfin he co-founded Plumtree Software. Redfin went public in August 2017. In April 2020 it raised money by selling common stock and convertible preferred stock.

Business before the pandemic

Redfin runs a real estate brokerage whose lead agents are its own employees, and a listings website that sends them customers. GeekWire reported that it had 3,377 employees at the end of 2019, including more than 1,500 lead agents. Kelman wrote that Redfin had hired about 25 percent fewer agents each year than its website demand could support, so that a 25 percent fall in demand would still leave the workforce fully productive.

What the pandemic changed

"Now housing demand is down much more than that," Kelman wrote in his April 7, 2020 post. Forty-one percent of agents left that Friday, along with coordinators, recruiters and renovators who supported them. Most went on furlough with a transition bonus and health-care benefits through the summer; some, including new hires who had not yet met a customer, were let go for good. Headquarters staff took temporary salary cuts of 10 to 15 percent and lost their bonuses for the year.

The estimate was Redfin's own. The CARES Act added $600 a week to state unemployment benefits, and Redfin estimated that three in four of the departing field staff could collect more than their Redfin pay. The estimate assumed every state opted in, and it did not account for workers whose history disqualified them or who would not get the maximum. "No matter how much unemployment insurance the government pays, letting people go, even temporarily, is an unnatural act that we hate having to do," Kelman wrote. He ended: "We'll fight like wild animals to bring everyone on furlough back."

After the first shock

Redfin had also been buying homes directly through RedfinNow. It decided in November 2022 to wind that business down and finished selling the inventory in the second quarter of 2023. For 2024 it reported revenue of $1.04 billion, a net loss of $164.8 million and 4,778 employees.

Since 2025

Rocket Companies, the Detroit-based owner of Rocket Mortgage, completed its acquisition of Redfin on July 1, 2025. The companies introduced Rocket Preferred Pricing the same day: buyers who use a Redfin agent and a Rocket Mortgage loan get a one-percentage-point cut in their interest rate for the first year, or a lender credit of up to $6,000. The release quoted Kelman as Redfin's chief executive; Redfin's blog now describes him as its former CEO.

Sources

Back to top