Homepoint laying off hundreds of employees

Homepoint is laying off hundreds of employees in a move it says will save it over $100 million per year. 

The lender, a major player in the wholesale space, is making the cuts to reckon with the market's high-rate, low-margin environment, it said in a statement Friday. The announcement comes weeks after its parent company, Home Point Financial reported a $44 million net loss in the second quarter brought on by market factors that included competitive wholesale pricing. 

"Over the last several months, we have executed multiple strategic actions to minimize the human impact as much as possible, but continually worsening market conditions make this additional step necessary," said Brad Pettiford, director of public relations, in a statement.

Impacted workers across the company were given 60 day notices and their last day is in November, according to Homepoint. The lender also said it assessed its plans on severance, equity and healthcare to support departing employees.

The news was first reported by National Mortgage Professional. 

It's the latest wholesale player to shake up its operations this year, after Guaranteed Rate announced it would shut down its Stearns Lending wholesale channel in January. Last month, lenders loanDepot and Mountain West Financial said they were exiting the space. 

Homepoint's layoffs also follow a price war set off by industry leader United Wholesale Mortgage in June, which said it would shave up to 1 percentage point on all product types. Last week, Homepoint lowered the price of its conforming conventional loans by 75 basis points for homebuyers in 20 states, targeting areas with higher percentages of loans originated to people below the area median income.

The departing professionals join the list of the thousands of nonbank mortgage bank workers and brokers who have lost their jobs this year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday showed industry payrolls fell for the third consecutive month to 405,000 in July. Other lenders have gone out of business, including Bay Area real estate fintech Reali.