> In fact, the complaint states, the vast majority of consumers who sold to Opendoor actually lost thousands of dollars compared with selling on the traditional market, because [1]the company’s offers have been below market value on average and [2]its costs have been higher than what consumers typically pay when using a traditional realtor.
My understanding of Opendoor is that their product specifically targets homes in the low to mid range of the price distribution, making it easier for them to have a high-quality prediction on whether acquiring a home can be profitable to them.
for [1] this almost surely means they will be below market on average, since the upper-bound is unconstrained. Home prices follow a log-normal distribution.
[2] sounds worse. A typical agent-driven transaction is between 4.5% and 6% of the sale price. For Opendoor to be pocketing _more_ than this is a pretty bad value prop. However, even granting that this is the case -- there is some premium that certain home sellers may place on just washing their hands of the whole process, handing their keys to Opendoor and getting a check next week. That seems fine to me, but not if Opendoor are claiming otherwise.