My experience NOT selling to Opendoor

I appreciate that someone just asked me for an update for a post I made several months ago, when we were under contract to sell to Opendoor. We ultimately decided to not sell to them, and it was a VERY good decision.

Context: we’re in a VHCOL area and given our family situation and busy jobs we were just looking for the easiest way to sell and move. Our house was in good shape overall – very good bones, we stayed on top of all maintenance and systems, etc. We had put a LOT of time, money and love into the home, but it was also dated and needed some cosmetic work to the interior and exterior.

We solicited an offer from Opendoor and thought it seemed…good enough. Not amazing but we figured the benefit of a stress-free transaction was worth what money we might leave on the table. Some realtors told us we were making a mistake, but the thought of having to prep a house for sale, deal with showings, etc – just seemed like more than we wanted to deal with.

As the market started to heat up though, the numbers started to look even worse. I went back to Opendoor and asked if they would raise their offer and they did, but only slightly. Plus I started to read more about their business model and realized they weren’t going to much work to the house before selling it at a hugely inflated price.

We talked to a realtor who finally convinced us that it was worth it to sell on the market and he put us in touch with a lender who helped us game out a plan to buy a new house, move, and THEN sell (so we could have the work done after we vacated). We figured out the financing, went under contract on the new house, and moved. The day after we moved we had a flurry of contractors in to do all the small fixups and paint the whole house. We spent about 10k on prep, cleaning, etc.

The house looked beautiful. All those cosmetic projects I put off for years to prioritize other things – we should have done because it wasn’t as much as I anticipated and looked amazing. House sold quickly.

In the end, all said and done we netted $96k more than Opendoor would have netted us. That includes the carrying costs of holding the house longer, the repairs, realtor commissions, etc. And now a family gets to enjoy it (and all the work we put into it over the years!).

I’m really glad we did it this way. It was stressful but workable (paying two mortgages for a couple months wasn’t super easy though). I can’t see a compelling reason for anyone with a house in good condition to sell to Opendoor, which also makes me think that the houses being sold by them are going to have some problems in a lot of cases. They don’t do an inspection – just a video walkthough and an exterior visit – they’re a good option for a seller wanting to offload a property with problems, but in this market there really is no good reason to sell a perfectly good house to them, in my opinion.