Opendoor, a Silicon Valley startup that mines data to buy homes, sight unseen, and flip them for a profit, has raised a $210 million investment led by Norwest Venture Partners. The company has now raised $320 million in total.
A house-flipping startup raised $210 million
Opendoor has sold 3,750 homes so far. It wants (a lot) more.
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Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
To sell a home through Opendoor, homeowners turn over basic information about their home — input that usually takes only a few minutes. Opendoor then makes an offer for the home based on data it crunches from both public and private sources. Opendoor’s goal is to sell the house for a small profit.
Opendoor charges fees that usually work out from 6 percent to 12 percent of the sale price, the CEO previously told Recode. In exchange, sellers — for example, people who have to move quickly for a new job — get a fast sale. To help lure buyers away from traditional realtors, Opendoor gives them 30 days to return the home if they are unhappy with it.
Only a “small fraction” of the new money raised will be used to purchase homes. The startup previously raised hundreds of millions of dollars of debt for that purpose.
The company’s founders include Keith Rabois, the venture capitalist who has held executive positions at both PayPal and Square.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
