Publicly Traded House Scalper Companies: Opendoor

1 year ago
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Opendoor is a $900 million public company based in San Francisco that founded in 2014. That means it has never endured a housing market downturn. Spoiler alert: I don’t think it is going to survive this market cycle.
Homeowners can sell their properties directly to instant buyer firms like Opendoor without hiring a real estate agent to list the home on the open market.
A lot of people dislike house flippers but house flippers typically target derelict or outdated properties and perform extensive renovations and improvements before relisting the property for sale. Flipping a house can take several months and during that time the house flipper has to continue to pay things like utilities, taxes, and mortgage payments.
In contrast to traditional house flippers, instant buyers will list and sell properties within weeks after making minimal improvements. The scope of the work usually only involves what is necessary to make it clean and safe as opposed to the extensive rehab a house flipper would do. Instant buyer companies are trying to be the middleman between sellers and buyers during market bull runs so they can pocket equity gains and fees from both sides of the transaction. Renovations are minimal because the emphasis is getting the property back on the market as quickly as possible.
Instant buyers like Opendoor have taken advantage of the hot real estate markets in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Tampa. It is a volume game for them.
The Federal Reserve has been increasing interest rates which makes it costly to take out a mortgage. Why would anyone sell their house given the next one they buy will have high borrowing costs?
Opendoors 2022 earnings show in their fourth quarter they had a loss of $1.4 billion.

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