The real estate market is already starting to feel the impact of the massive layoffs at Amazon as some homeowners and buyers begin scrambling to deal with the fallout.
KIRO 7 spoke with a pair of real estate brokers whose clients were among those laid off. They are already getting calls about selling their homes or calling off their hunt for a new one.
“We’ve been fielding calls left and right since the very, very early morning,” Adriano Tori, a real estate broker in Bellevue, said.
Tori, the founder and CEO of RexMont Real Estate, has been buying and selling homes for more than 20 years. In that time, he has seen plenty of layoffs and turbulent times.
A shakeup like this, though, is rare.
“We haven’t seen anything of this magnitude in the last few years,” he said.
Tori told KIRO 7 he is already getting calls from clients who were laid off from Amazon, trying to figure out how best to move forward. Some are considering renting their home to supplement their lost income. Others are considering selling and moving on to a new city in hopes of finding a new job.
“These new developments in the job market will, at least for the next few months, make it more of a buyer’s market,” Tori said.
Adam Hestad, a broker with Compass real estate, told KIRO 7 he expects to see some turbulence in the market, but nothing long-term.
“Amazon had layoffs, we have to remember, just a couple of years ago,” Hestad said. “The market survived that. It wasn’t a free-for-all, we kind of bounced back.”
Hestad said he spoke with a client Tuesday morning who called off his house hunt after getting laid off and stressed that these moves impact much more than just the housing market.
“There are market effects that we are talking about, but the thing I try to remember is that it affects individual people,” he said. ”That’s the biggest thing. The numbers are one thing, 14,000, but it always comes down to one individual person or family that gets affected by this.”
So, will these layoffs affect housing prices around the Sound? According the Tori, the biggest drops in prices will be among houses priced between $1 million and $2 million, not more reasonably-priced homes.
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