Yea, basically this seems to be those "WE BUY HOMES FAST WITH CASH!!!" signs you see jammed all over gas stations and highway medians, except with a responsive web design and javascript.
The biggest difference is price. Those companies offer 65 to 80 cents on the dollar for homes. We offer full market value, and take fees that are comparable to a traditional transaction when you consider the full cost of selling. (Our total fees are generally 8 to 10%)
The article has many key inaccuracies that the reporter refused to correct, mostly around profit. If we made $20k per home, we'd give most of that back to sellers through higher offers and lower fees. And the data science team would panic, since their key metric is accuracy.
Thanks for your response. I am not knocking on you or the product because it is a lucrative market (if done right). So, you are taking the risk on the houses? Do you guys rent out the house? What happens if it doesn't sell?
Idk but maybe this? "But OpenDoor is unique in that it owns all the homes it lists for sale, countering the prevailing trend in Silicon Valley of solely running a marketplace that matches buyers and sellers. As a result, OpenDoor’s strategy is steeped with risk, potentially backfiring if the economy tailspins."
I'm not sure of the difference on the buying side, but their selling side seem to be quite different than the normal approach https://www.opendoor.com/homes
What is the case is that finding cash buyers often requires some informal connections. My metro has a fair amount of flipping going on, but it's hard to point to the marketplace where all this occurs. There's the foreclosure trawlers, the agents who knows a guy who just sold his latest project and is looking for the next one, the guys from the billboard who are looking for total wrecks, ... It's daunting.