I'm kinda surprised to see so much commentary on this. A lot of folks on here deeply misunderstand this industry, which is understandable, but there's a lot of

I'm kinda surprised to see so much commentary on this. A lot of folks on here deeply misunderstand this industry, which is understandable, but there's a lot of very strident and incorrect opinion. Simply put, one of the biggest mortgage booms in history just came to an end. Rates were at all-time lows. That meant an unbelievable boom in demand for mortgage refis. Then when the Fed started taking inflation seriously, mortgage rates (which tend to track 2-3% above 10-year treasury yields) skyrocketed to 10-year highs. This means that very few people are in a position to benefit from a refi, and that business is pretty much dried up. The refi business is the specialty of Rocket Mortgage and other online lenders. There is tremendous demand for housing right now, due to millenials being homebuying age and housing preferences changing with the pandemic. However, supply is tightly constrained. Boomers are aging in-place, home builders aren't completing homes due to building supply and labor disruption, investors are buying properties (smaller effect than people claim), and sellers don't want to sell without a home to buy. So for-sale inventory is at all time lows. This means less demand for purchase money mortgages, the main other product of a mortgage bank. Mortgage lending is notoriously labor intensive. Nearly every lender, like Rocket, staffed up huge to meet the demand of the refi boom. Now, nearly every lender finds itself overstaffed for a mortgage market bust. Hence, layoffs. Every lender from the largest (Rocket) to the smallest is impacted. This is just how the mortgage industry works, though. It is both seasonal and dependent on the economic cycle.