Opendoor Acquires Open Listings To Make Buying A Home Easier

Morning Report: Online real estate company Opendoor purchased Open Listings today, a company focused on making the home-buying process less expensive.

The real estate market is hot right now, and startups like Opendoor are taking advantage. Having just raised $325 million in Series E funding in June, the online real estate marketplace put its funds to use for its first acquisition: Open Listings.

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Founded in 2014, Opendoor aims to make buying and selling real estate faster with its online platform. The idea is that with a few clicks online or on a smartphone, people can sell their homes to Opendoor, which uses market data to come up with an offer, conducts home assessments, and sells the home to a future buyer.

Open Listings has aimed to make the home buying process more affordable with automation. The company is a Series A-stage startup that raised $7.6 million since its inception from Matrix partners, Y Combinator, and others. The company reached $1 billion in homes purchased through its app in July, per a company press release.

Opendoor plans to incorporate Open Listings into its product to introduce the buying side of the home real estate equation. Individuals will be able to buy, sell, or trade their homes on the Opendoor platform, according to a company blog post.

In total, Opendoor has raised $645 million in venture capital for its efforts and is backed by some big names in VC including General Atlantic, GGV Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. The company was last publicly valued at $2.25 billion, post-money.

Buying a house is the biggest purchase most people make in their lives. Opendoor is betting that people are becoming comfortable enough with technology and online transactions to make those important decisions with a click of a button. Opendoor CEO Eric Wu has “shrugged off” questions about a slowing housing market, according to TechCrunch. However, like any fluctuating market, we’ll have to wait and see if the model, and that positive attitude, holds up in a down market climate.

Illustration Credit: Li Anne Dias