Opendoor Buys Open Listings To Set Up A Marketplace For Buying, Selling, And Trading-In Homes

By Pulse 2.0 Staff ● Sep 13, 2018

Opendoor, an online home-selling service, has announced recently that it has acquired Open Listings. Following the acquisition, Opendoor plans to set up the first end-to-end marketplace for buying, selling and trading-in homes. Open Listings is a platform that makes it easier and cheaper for homebuyers to find, tour, and buy any home that is on the market.

Citing a 2017 industry report about consumer housing trends, Opendoor pointed out that 71% of home sellers are also looking to buy homes. What Opendoor does is that it gives the certainty of an offer on their homes by removing sales contingencies and the added stress of listing homes as they look for new ones.

Opendoor will enable its customers to line up home sales with the purchase of any home on the market through a simple trade-in transaction. And buyers who use Open Listings will receive a discount on the home that is purchased through a commission rebate of up to 50%. This will be possible after Opendoor integrates Open Listings with their platform.

“Opendoor modernized how people sell their homes by making it simple and instant and we are excited to now bring that same simplicity to buying a home,” said Opendoor founder and CEO Eric Wu. “By integrating Open Listings’ online buying experience with Opendoor, we’re putting customers in control of the entire process so they can buy, sell or trade-in their home seamlessly be it for retirement, up-sizing for a growing family or moving for a dream job.”

Opendoor said that integrating Open Listings with their mortgage, title and home services will make it as “easy to buy, sell or trade-in a home as it is to hail a ride, book a flight, or shop online.” Interestingly, the integration of Open Listings in Opendoor is already in motion. For example, the combined services are already available in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“We share Opendoor’s vision that buying and selling a home should be radically simplified and on-demand,” added Open Listings CEO Judd Schoenholtz. “Joining forces with Opendoor will make it possible for customers to buy and sell a home with a simple, online process while giving customers a true competitive advantage over other buyers by having an Opendoor offer in their back pocket. Together, we’re eliminating double moves, added expenses, and months of headaches — which have all made moving a chore rather than the exciting life moment it should be.”

Prior to the acquisition, Open Listings participated in the Y Combinator startup accelerator program in 2015. Open Listings has 45 employees who work out of California, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, and Dallas-Fort Worth. And Open Listings’ investors include Matrix Partners, Initialized Capital, Alexis Ohanian, and Joe Montana. The company refunded over $8 million to customers who have purchased over $1 billion in homes on the market so far.