Mortgage players confirm more sweeping layoffs

Many more mortgage professionals are unemployed after a slew of companies from a fintech startup to publicly traded industry leaders revealed layoffs.

The cuts add to the lengthy list of mortgage firms shedding payroll in response to rising rates and declining affordability for prospective borrowers, and they come in the wake of a dismal jobs report showing nonbank mortgage payrolls on the decline. 

New American Funding confirmed some of the industry cycle's largest layoff numbers, recently terminating 300 employees and letting go 625 workers since the beginning of the year. The Tustin, California-based lender and servicer, which had approximately 4,500 employees at the end of 2021, has since slashed its payroll by 14%, co-founder and CEO Rick Arvielo told National Mortgage News.

"Everyone here has refinanced into sub-3 rates," he said. "We saw our rate-and-term percentage go from about 85% of the business we did in 2021 to about 10%. So all the rate-and-term guys are pretty much done."

The company said it made smaller headcount reductions since the beginning of the year but the layoffs ramped up slightly since March and accelerated this summer. In March, the Federal Reserve implemented its first rate hike since 2018, fueling the season's mortgage rate climbs.

Despite layoffs, Arvielo said NAF is still hiring experienced loan officers and call center agents, part of an expansion campaign announced last summer. The company also recently slipped by Rocket Mortgage to become the highest-rated mortgage servicer on J.D. Power's newly redesigned customer satisfaction survey, breaking Rocket's nine-year streak at the top.

Mortgage fintech Ribbon, in response to the market's current volatility, terminated 136 employees at the end of July, it said. The New York-based startup, which has raised $625 million since it was founded in 2017, provides cash offers for borrowers and operates in 15 states. 

"The market conditions exposed areas that need improvement across our product and team to evolve with the changing consumer," said Ribbon co-founder and CEO Shaival Shah in a public post. "I am ultimately responsible to all those decisions and this decision, as a result."

The fintech will compensate impacted employees with two months of base salary, paid upfront, and three months of healthcare COBRA coverage effective Aug. 1. Ribbon is also extending the time to exercise shares from 90 days to one year and removing the 1-year vesting period for those within two months of reaching one year of Ribbon employment. 

Multichannel lender Open Mortgage also confirmed it recently cut a small number of workers. The Austin, Texas-based firm let go workers including employees in reverse mortgage operations, although the channel is performing well, founder and CEO Scott Gordon told Reverse Mortgage Daily. 

"We are experiencing the same headwinds as every other lender nationwide — rising interest rates, record-low housing inventories, and inflation creating weaker demand," the company said in a statement to National Mortgage News. "As a result, we made the difficult decision to reduce a small number of operations and corporate staff to better align with the lower traditional purchase volume expected this year."

Open Mortgage cut 14 staffers in June. The company said it is moving forward with growth plans, adding 17 new branches since January including seven in July and doubling its reverse mortgage originator roster.

Larger mortgage players revealed significant layoffs in earnings report conference calls. Finance of America let go of an undisclosed number of workers as part of measures to reduce headcount and expenses by roughly 20%, saving it over $100 million this year, its president and interim CEO Graham Fleming said in a conference call. 

Guild Holdings, parent company of San Diego-based lender and servicer Guild Mortgage, also laid off an unknown number of workers in the first half of the year, a move expected to save it $40 million annually, executives revealed. 

RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing Corp. will cut 71 workers in October, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed late last month in New York. The firm was recently sold by Freedom Mortgage two years after its purchase to Two Harbors Investment subsidiary Matrix Financial Services.