Inside Opendoor: What Two Years of Transactions Say About Their Prospects

This article was co-written with Mike DelPrete, a tech entrepreneur and business advisor who previously led strategy and new ventures at TradeMe, the leading real estate portal in New Zealand. For more commentary on the latest in real estate tech, make sure to subscribe to his mailing list here. The article was originally published in Inman (paywall).

Raising $210 million is enough to get any business into the news. That’s especially true when the business in question is Opendoor, the 2-year-old real estate startup that aims to bring simplicity to the housing market by purchasing homes directly from sellers and flipping them over to buyers after a quick spruce-up.

This latest infusion of capital, announced in late November, brings Opendoor’s total war chest to $320 million. Based in San Francisco and led by CEO Eric Wu, Opendoor plans to use the capital to expand its active market presence from Phoenix and Dallas to 10 cities by the end of 2017.

Investors and stakeholders in residential real estate have eyed Opendoor with wary interest since the company was launched as “Project Homerun” in July 2014 by former PayPal exec Keith Rabois. With tons of dry powder and two years of operations in Phoenix behind it, Opendoor is building momentum: the company is already the…