Our experience selling to Opendoor was a mixed bag. In general, the offer was actually more than we had expected considering comparable sales of identical units over the previous 6 months. Opendoor's offer was actually more than 10% above the highest sale in the last 6 months of an identical floorplan. That sounds awesome until you get into the rest of the details.
What they like to advertise is that you don't pay a commission. While this is absolutely true, what they do charge is service fees in the 5.5% - 6% range which is as much as you would pay the realtors in commissions and you still have to pay title company fees just like in a traditional sale. So, in that case you really save nothing and possibly pay a bit more than a traditional sale.
Repairs: Well that's a bit of a joke. They take a 10-15 minute video tour of the property and determine what repairs were required. In our case they said it was $4,638.22. This is an oddly specific number, but they do not provide any form of details on how they arrived at that number, but in the end if the net sale price is what you are looking to get, just ignore this as a cost of doing business. Our property was 100% turn-key ready (painted, carpet clean & serviceable, everything in perfect working order) as it was a rental and we had prepared it for putting it on the rental market before Opendoor sent us an e-mail that made our eyes pop. It would have been interesting to see what they would have asked for in terms of repairs if the property was not turn-key ready.
Where things fall apart is primarily with communications and details. The Opendoor advisor assigned was not very responsive to questions and would always tell you they'd get right on it, but you'd have to continue to bug them to actually get an answer. After going through the video tour, they say they will deliver a final offer within 48 hours. In our case, after a week and continuing to press for where the final offer was, I got a different advisor who told me that they had lost the video tour and we'd have to do it again.
So, we had to start all over to schedule and complete the video tour and get the offer. Once all the details came in, we got down to business and signed the contract. Then the advisor just dumped the entire thing on the title company. The title company is the coordinator, but not the buyer. As questions came up, it was difficult to get answers from Opendoor. The draft settlement statement was trying to withhold $800 for HOA dues even though they got the HOA letter showing all fees paid and current. Then they tried to hold an additional $500 for final water bill, even though the HOA pays the water and there is no liability. The only way I could get Opendoor to respond is to refuse to close unless they corrected the statement. Yes, eventually you would get the money withheld back, but frankly it is a pain to deal with and what if they decide they aren't giving it back? How much would you have to spend to fight it?
If you are in a time crunch, they say they can close in as little at 14 days. That is an utter impossibility with their process and title partner OSNational. Since our property was vacant, we wanted to close as soon as possible to minimize our costs of holding a vacant unit. Opendoor never waited on us for any response to any needs and the process took 6 weeks. A week of that was lost to them "losing" the first video walkthrough, but even after the 2nd one it took an additional 5 weeks. The final week and ½ of delay was due to the title company failing to order HOA letters in a timely manner and then attempting to charge us nearly $600 in extra rush fees because of their failure to order them until 48 hours before closing. While that really was the title company’s fubar, Opendoor did nothing to help and it was their chosen partner for closing.
Ultimately we did close, albeit late, and we did get the price we wanted with somewhat less uncertainty, but much more hassle and stress than a traditional sale. I will note that I believe that we did close in 6 weeks only due to the fact that I was pressuring them every step of the way.
Will we use them again? Well, if they offer us 10% over market again, sure. If they make an average offer, we wouldn’t due to the added stress and involvement required to get the job done in a timely fashion.