Home Ownership

[Gatordash]

Originally Posted by Gatordash [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I sold my old home on Open Door. Closes next Friday. So far everything has been exactly like Open Door said it would be. I'll update if it actually works. What Open Door offered me seems too good to be true so I will be skeptical until the money actually hits my bank account.

Pretty interesting business model. I originally thought they were in the business of flipping homes on a large scale to make money but essentially Open Door's business model is to fuck realtors out of their commissions. Which I'm kinda all for. My realtor was pretty pissed when I told her I'm trying out an I-buyer.

OPENDOOR UPDATE: You should all try Opendoor when selling your home. I got an extra $70k and didn't have to fix or show my home at all.

Selling your home to Opendoor is legit. Just starting there because I was skeptical of it. If you've ever bought or sold a home, you know you will be signing a ton of paperwork that you only read small portions of and never know what's in there. Opendoor explained the entire process to me and everything happened exactly like they said. There was no "fine print" to the process.

How it works is you fill out some basic home info online and they give you a range of what they will offer. You then have a Zoom call where you walk around your home showing everything to them. Lastly, they have an inspector come out to look at your backyard and the foundation of the home. That is it. It took a week from when I submitted my home info to get a finalized offer price. I closed the home in two weeks. No one ever even went inside. After that you basically pack up your house and take some pictures showing that its empty. They have an escrow company contact you (you can pick your own but I just went with Opendoor's suggestion) to fill out all the paperwork. They contract with some online notary where I signed everything on my phone while I was at work.

I live in Las Vegas where everything is a master planned development with HOA's and all that. I only say that because MY EXACT HOUSE sold 3 weeks before my finalized price from Opendoor for 70k less than their offer and 30k less than Offerpad's offer. That being said, I happened to have the exact home Opendoor is looking for. They want single family starter homes in nice neighborhoods because they re-do the carpeting, paint it, and can sell it right away.

To my understanding, they way Opendoor makes money buying homes is from cutting out the realtor. They charge a 5% 'service fee' on the sale of your home in place of the typical 6% 'commission' your realtor would charge. So if they buy your house for $500,000, they take 25k of that. But even still, from your perspective as a seller, you are saving $5k because your realtor would have taken 30k instead of the 25k. Opendoor will also take out money for repairs. You can probably negotiate this but I didn't. They wanted $7k in repairs for my house which seemed reasonable.

All of this info, including the fees and closing costs, was given to me up front in the "finalized offer" they gave me a week after I contacted them. Its a free offer and they ended up paying me more than what I would have got on the open market unless my home value went up 70k in 3 weeks. You should all try it.