My [Excellent] OpenDoor Experience

Bill Bing
Bill Bing
Sep 5, 2018 · 6 min read

Background: After more than a decade in North Carolina, I got a job in Boston and needed to relocate with my wife, 6 year old, 3 year old and hairy dog in short order. I had heard about OpenDoor thanks to following Keith Rabois on Twitter and also because it was advertised on the radio locally. So I gave it a shot. Here’s my recap of the experience for anyone else considering working with OpenDoor but not fully comfortable with the idea of selling their home to a tech company.

Part 1: Survey Says…!

After getting the job offer, I went to the OpenDoor website and started filling out some information. It wasn’t too onerous, and took 10-15 minutes to provide some basic information about my house and its condition. In retrospect it might have been the most difficult part of the whole home-selling process. Once I finished answering questions I received a message saying that I’d get an offer in the next couple of days.

Still half-expecting a lowball figure, I waited a day or two before receiving the email with my offer. To my pleasant surprise, it was quite close to the estimated value on Zillow/Trulia and other similar sites. I had a call with an OpenDoor associate named Mason to review the offer and noted that we had made a few upgrades that perhaps they didn’t know about (like replacing the front door). Mason asked me to send some photos, and within 48 hours my offer increased by a little over $3,000. Easy as can be. With the “service fee” basically offsetting realtor fees, it seemed like a good and fair deal.

Part 2: Paperwork, without Work or Paper

Now that we had agreed on price, Mason sent my wife and me three documents through our OpenDoor portal where we could track the progress of the sale. The first was a NC advisory on the role of an agent we needed to acknowledge receipt of, the second was a disclosure that OpenDoor owns a title company we could use if we wanted, and the third was the home sale agreement. We e-signed after quickly looking over the simple docs. That was it, we were done.

Next up, I received an email from a local law firm that OpenDoor works with asking for a few pieces of information. It was probably a 5–6 page form that was straightforward and basic, and we filled it out and remitted electronically. We also were able to schedule our inspection and closing date online with no need to talk to anyone. That said, we did have a customer support specialist named Grace who I spoke to a couple of times during the process just to make sure I wasn’t supposed to be doing anything else — it was legitimately that easy.

Step 3: Honor Your Offer

At this point everything had gone so smoothly that I was starting to get concerned there would be a “Gotcha” moment. The logical time would be the inspection, and right on cue the OpenDoor team showed up to check out our home. There was a lead inspector and three specialists (roof, termite and HVAC). Over the course of 2–3 hours they methodically worked their way through our house and did their work while I stayed out of the way. They all seemed honest and were professional and friendly.

Our roof was 16 years old and the HVAC unit ~15, so we were especially paranoid they would recommend major repairs and/or replacement in those areas. Instead, a couple of days following the inspection they came back with around $5,500 of repairs that either they could deal with or we could fix. This was well within the range we were expecting for a 30 year old house we did literally no repairs to prior to engaging OpenDoor.

Of the $5,500, they reduced the ask by ~$1,500 because we had done a couple of the items they listed (chimney cleaning and one HVAC repair). The other item we got a credit for was a question about our counters. They were granite wrapped but not solid granite, and we listed them as Granite (as had the person we bought the house from previously), but the inspector called them Corian. We were able to more or less split the difference on this item, and in light of their reasonable approach to all other matters, this resulted in a deduction of ~$4,000 which we were happy with.

Step 4: Always Be Closing

After the inspection I had pretty much moved beyond paranoia, to just hoping not to jinx anything. Throughout the 4 or 5 week process I had been flying back and forth to Boston for work, and I was careful to knock on wood whenever mentioning how easy things had been so far. The final steps that remained were the closing and walkthrough. We scheduled the closing for 1:30pm and the walkthrough for 3:30pm on the same day.

For the closing we went to a lawyer’s office in North Raleigh and it couldn’t have been easier. He had everything prepared for us and walked us through signing in about 20 minutes, including collecting our wiring instructions. We went back to the home, finished packing up our things and then met the OpenDoor person who did the walkthrough (he was also right on time). The walkthrough took 10 minutes and was effortless. Then we handed over our keys, said goodbye to our home and got into the car to head to Boston.

Oh yeah — and we got paid in full one day after the closing.


Step 5: What We DIDN’T Have to Do

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the pain we didn’t have to endure in selling our home with two small children and a hairy dog. We didn’t have to:

  • Clean and stage our house
  • Host so much as a single showing
  • Do any repairs other than the items in our inspection report (most of which we allowed OpenDoor to do based on the reasonable quotes)
  • Quibble with inexperienced homebuyers over inspection findings
  • Deal with buyer financing issues, appraisals, agents, attorneys (other than noted above), payoff letters, titles, etc.

Some final thoughts — If this post reads like an informercial so be it. I can assure you OpenDoor paid me nothing to write it and my motiviation is solely to help others who are in a similar situation, with small kids and pets and who face a time crunch to relocate. I’m explaining the process for would-be OpenDoor customers who are intimidated or unsure what to expect.

Could we have potentially sold our home for more money? Sure. If we had done some repairs and upgrades, and kept the house clean and staged we probably could have sold it for 3–5% more than OpenDoor paid us. It also probably would have cost us another 1–2% to do the repairs, upgrades and staging, so the net is more like 2–3%. And it certainly would have taken a lot longer… we probably closed on the sale of our home with OpenDoor faster than it would have taken to go under contract with a buyer using the traditional route.

Some people might opt for the chance for more money but for me, the convenience and massive reduction in stress and anxiety was well worth it. Also, keeping a house staged and showing-ready with small kids and a dog is a major pain, and bypassing that altogether was a huge bonus. Whatever you choose, hopefully this post will enable you to make a more informed decision. Good luck to you either way!

Bill Bing

Written by

Bill Bing

Startups/strategic finance focus. 4 exits for > $1B (Upromise, Square 1, DAS Communications, TransLoc).

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