isn't being "[...] much more focused on the customer experience, trying to give fair offers to every home [...]" just a layer on top of the business model - which seems to be indistinguishable from flipping houses?
> We typically don't spend very long renovating our homes. We'd rather reinvent the buying and selling experience itself, and do a larger number of transactions.
I think we're getting a bit hung up on definitions in this thread. We do flip houses, in that we buy them and then resell them right away. But in real estate, the connotation of a "flipper" is someone who's either (1) really good at identifying underpriced houses, or (2) really good at getting return on investment (ROI) through renovations. One of the best ways to identify underpriced houses is to take advantage of people who are down on their luck and need to sell fast, so many people also think of "flippers" very negatively.
Opendoor's model isn't based on finding underpriced houses or renovation ROI. We charge a fee (transparently and upfront) for the service of buying your home and taking on the risk of selling it. Our goal is to make that fee as small as possible, and to provide our services to as many people as possible.
We're not trying to make huge amounts of money on every transaction. We're trying to do a lot of transactions, at a fair price.