Our first People Roundup of the year starts on a sombre note with multiple layoffs in the United States...
Zillow has announced an unspecified number of layoffs
The majority of the layoffs were for advertising and agent software roles.
A company statement shared with GeekWire last week said:
As part of our ongoing commitment to working with our agent customers to offer a digitized and integrated experience to more movers in more markets, we are focused on the long-term growth of the products and business solutions we offer to agents. We feel as confident as ever about this strategy, and we continue to prioritize investment in the areas that will most benefit our agent customers.
This week we’ve made some changes to the organizational structure of several agent software and advertising teams, resulting in the elimination of certain roles. We are grateful to the impacted employees for their contributions to Zillow and are ensuring their transition is as smooth as possible. While decisions like these are never easy and never our first choice, we believe responsibly managing our resources has positioned our teams well to deliver for consumers, agent customers and the broader real estate industry in 2025.
The US-based brokerage Redfin has axed 46 employees with the majority of layoffs focused on managers at its Seattle headquarters.
A Redfin statement said that the affected roles were "primarily managers in our headquarters, program and field leadership roles", and stressed that its agents were not impacted.
"We’re always looking for ways to be more lean so we can do more for customers," said Redfin.
The brokerage has cut vast swathes of staff since the pandemic, including reducing its headcount by circa 40% between April 2022 and December 2023.
Anna Sasot Olagüe is Adevinta's new head of people systems. She will manage the position alongside her current role as the head of IT portfolio.
Olagüe joined Adevinta in 2021 and has been promoted twice since, to people systems delivery lead in 2022 and head of IT portfolio in 2023.
Olagüe is also the co-founder of HR Afterword (2018) and previously worked at Accenture.
The Adevinta-owned German real estate marketplace Kleinanzeigen has appointed Julia Carloff-Winkelmann as its next chief HR officer.
Carloff-Winkelmann's career history includes similar positions at the real estate management platform BuildingMinds and the e-bike subscription service Dance. She also previously worked at eBay.
Adevinta said:
We are delighted that Julia has joined the team. At the beginning of this year, she took over the newly created role of chief HR officer. With more than 20 years of service, Julia has extensive HR experience in the areas of e-commerce and mobility services. In addition, she is also a qualified coach.
Lewis Ng has returned to PropertyGuru as CEO, replacing the ousted incumbent Hari V. Krishnan.
Ng's appointment comes swiftly off the back of private equity firm EQT taking full control of PropertyGuru Group, Singapore's leading real estate marketplaces, in December 2024.
Krishnan leaves after nearly ten years at the helm.
PropertyGuru also appointed members to a new-look board as part of the management reshuffle.
Christophe de Rassenfosse has announced his departure from Dubai-based Property Finder.
De Rassenfosse, who was Chief Product Officer at Property Finder from August 2021 to December 2024, commented on LinkedIn:
"When I joined Property Finder in 2021, I saw a gem—an ambitious company with immense potential but facing challenges in product execution. I’m deeply grateful to Michael [Lahyani, CEO] and Ari [Kesisoglu, President] for trusting me with the opportunity to shape the future of this organization."
REA Group, best known for operating Realestate.com.au in Australia, has added a major hire to its REA India segment.
Joining is Vikas Wadhawan, who will be the COO of the Group's recently opened Global Capability Center (GCC) in India.
The GCC, which opened in September, is tasked with building data, cloud, and AI products for its users as part of a larger plan to increase the company’s headcount in India to 10% of its global workforce.
Wadhawan was promoted from within after serving as REA India's Chief Financial Officer for 13 years.
REA India comprises leading marketplaces such as Housing.com, PropTiger, and Makaan.
Steve Maidment, Group CTO at Rea, said:
"The appointment of a COO marks a significant milestone for REA Cyber City and will play an important part in embedding our world-class engineering capabilities and bringing our ways of working to life."
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