Johnny Hanna, the CEO of Utah-based flat fee real estate brokerage Homie, resigned on Friday, citing high interest rates and instability in the market. A week prior to his resignation, Homie, which specializes in buy-side agents, laid off 40 workers, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
The company’s co-founder and president Mike Peregrina will assume the role of CEO. Hanna will maintain his position as the chairman of its board of directors.
Hanna, who had co-founded the company, made his announcement on the Silicon Slopes Summit stage during a discussion on “authentic culture” in tech companies, Axios reported.
“Interest rates are near triple what they were in recent years,” he said. “Add that to the beginning of a recession, and you’ve got an uphill battle.”
The layoffs and resignation of Hanna come roughly 18 months after the flat-fee brokerage announced that it would hire 1,000 buy-side agents across the country. Its fortunes turned at the beginning of 2022, when, due to a “challenging real estate market” for homebuyers, it elected to lay off a quarter of the company, roughly 120 workers.
Homie charges homeowners just $1,500 to list and sell their homes, but is best known for representing homebuyers. The company has raised in a total of $35 million in venture capital since its founding in 2015.
Prior to Homie, Hanna co-founded the multifamily property management platform Entrata, which claims to serve three million residents across over 20,000 multifamily communities globally.
Homie is still serving clients in Utah, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Boise and Denver, the company says.
Divvy Homes, a proptech startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global Management, laid off about 40 employees in late September. The company buys homes in the U.S. and rents them to individuals who lack the credit history or savings to buy but hope to one day purchase the home.
