Zillow Group last week notified the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment it will lay off 20 employees from its Centennial office starting Jan. 3 as the Seattle-based company exits the home-buying market.

The company said the layoffs will continue throughout next year as part of a plan to shut down its Zillow Offers unit, an online service that bought and sold homes nationwide. Zillow told stockholders in a news release that it expects to cut its 5,300-person staff by 25% and will lose more than $500 million in the second half of the year because it bought homes during the third quarter for more than it estimated it could realize in the future by selling them.

“We’ve determined the unpredictability in forecasting home prices far exceeds what we anticipated and continuing to scale Zillow Offers would result in too much earnings and balance-sheet volatility,” Zillow co-founder and CEO Rich Barton said Nov. 2 in the release. “The most difficult part of this decision is that will impact many of our colleagues. This is not something we take lightly.”

The write-offs total $304 million in the third quarter and $240 million to $265 million in the fourth quarter on homes it has acquired or agreed to acquire by year’s end and expects losses when it resells them. As a result of the write-offs, Zillow lost $328.2 million in the July-to-September quarter, compared to a profit of $39.6 million in the third quarter of 2020. The company launched the unit in 2019.

Bloomberg reported Nov. 1 that Zillow is trying to sell 7,000 homes for $2.8 billion to institutional investors, some at a loss.

Zillow has been an active buyer of homes across Colorado and has nearly 180 homes on the market in Colorado Springs, Denver and Fort Collins. The company bought just over 100 homes in El Paso County between late 2019 and Aug. 20, and owns 103 homes in Douglas County and 60 in Adams County, according to assessor’s office records in those counties.