Farhad Manjoo, reporting for the New York Times.
“Opendoor fits that mold. Its plan is precarious: The company faces rising competition, high operating costs and — because we are talking about the market that caused the global financial crisis — the possibility of an unforeseen blowup. But if it works, Opendoor could be transformative; by making buying and selling houses as easy as buying and selling cars, it might thoroughly alter the American economy and change how we think of homeownership.
“Real estate is a $25 trillion asset class — people spend more on housing than food, transit, health care and education,” said Eric Wu, a founder and the chief executive of Opendoor. “We think we can make it work much better than it does now.”
These guys are for real. It’s pretty clear why these guys have gotten in to Zillow’s head.
Game changers. Especially for those sellers who are not going to lose sleep over 1 or 2%. We should see more firms play around with incorporating this type of service in the next few years. It’s basically putting your money where your AVM is.
Kind of reminds me of baseball. At one-time there wasn’t a single MLB team with an analytics employee. Today, every team has an analytics department and they are an integral part of all decision making.
Agreed
“Especially for those sellers who are not going to lose sleep over 1 or 2%.”
I believe there’s more of those sellers than most people think there are. Which bodes well for opendoor, offerpad, etc.