Seattle Bubble

HouseValues, a locally-based online real estate agent lead generator has been swirling the drain since the national real estate market first started slowing down last year. They were in the news again yesterday, as their CFO jumped ship.

For the second time in a year, Kirkland-based HouseValues is restructuring its executive team and laying off employees.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the online real-estate company announced its chief financial officer, R. Barry Allen, has resigned and 45 jobs are being eliminated.

Allen came to HouseValues last January during a restructuring that eliminated the chief operating officer position on as well as 60 other jobs. It also closed its Yakima call center in July, eliminating 100 jobs.

Anybody want to make wagers on how much longer HouseValues will last? I’ll be surprised if they still exist at this time next year. With the pressure of Zillow’s free service on one side, an increasingly slow market on the other, and generally poor service to their only real customers (real estate agents), I’m amazed they have lasted as long as they have.

(Elizabeth Rhodes, Seattle Times, 01.24.2008)

More bad news for local real estate lead-generation company HouseValues:

Amid a slumping real estate market, HouseValues Inc. is cutting 12 percent of its work force and closing its online lead generation business for mortgages.

Sixty employees are losing their jobs, all at the company’s Kirkland headquarters.
…
In a memo to employees, HouseValues Chief Executive Ian Morris said that the company has encountered a number of challenges because of a “steep decline in transaction volume in many local real estate markets.”
…
A HouseValues employee, who was not involved in the layoffs and asked not to be identified, said that “morale has been very low and a lot of people have been quitting from all departments.” As of September, the company employed 590 people. But the employee count has drifted lower in recent months as people have left for other jobs.

Also, HouseValues stock is down another 46% since I last mentioned them nine months ago. Maybe it’s just me, but now doesn’t exactly seem like the best of times to be building a business centered around real estate sales.

(John Cook, Seattle P-I, 01.25.2007)