The online mortgage lender Better.com laid off every member of its real estate team and reportedly shut down the unit in a new round of layoffs. According to a TECHLUSIVE report, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg, of Indian-origin, has laid off more than 4,000 employees in the United States and India since December 2021. It is unclear, though, how many staff will be impacted by the latest layoffs.
According to reports, Better.com planned to move from an in-house agent model to a partnership agent model.
Moreover, an impacted employee claimed they received “little to no severance, after getting a more than 50 percent salary cut in November to ‘ensure’ our jobs to come”.
Vishal Garg attracted criticism in December 2021 for firing 900 workers over a Zoom call. Following the option for employees to resign voluntarily in May 2022, Better.com received around 920 resignations.
In March of this year, Amazon and Better.com signed an agreement allowing Amazon employees to utilize their company shares to contribute to the initial payment needed for a mortgage. Better.com launched a program named “Equity Unlocker” that permits Amazon employees to use their vested equity as security, allowing them to make a down payment when purchasing a house.
“Even though equity is a valuable asset, it is considered ineligible by most banks and financial institutions when calculating the necessary down payment on a home,” Vishal Garg said.
The frequent layoffs at Better.com result from uncertain market conditions currently prevailing in the mortgage space creating a challenging operating environment.
