[leot]

Real estate is one of the few markets where non-experts can make money, where it’s not a hyper-liquid winner-take-all game. Coupled with this is the fact that housing is a necessity and owning a home leads people to invest in their communities more than if they were renting, I think it’s a good thing if Zillow (and OpenDoor, etc.) fail at pushing everyday people out of the business of real estate investing. Here’s hoping we see some regulation—the illiquidity of the home buying market is not a problem that needs to be solved.

[jdross]

Opendoor doesn't compete with real estate investors, they compete with realtors and mortgage brokers.

Opendoor's primary benefit is to enable people to move when they otherwise could not easily do so, creating more liquidity and matching supply and demand (often number of bedrooms in house to number of bedrooms now needed).

The challenge with moving is that most people need to sell their current house before they can afford (or even know what they can afford) to buy their next home. Opendoor lets a family buy that next home with its cash, then list their current home on the market or sell it to the company so they avoid the double mortgage or double move (home->rental->home)

[robocat]

Does Opendoor avoid some of the standard x% realtor fees on either or both of the transactions? Reduced fees could easily make a huge difference to expected profitability.

In contrast, “Zillow Seeks to Sell 7,000 Homes for $2.8 Billion” so Zillow lost more than a few percentage points.