

Keith Rabois’ Homebuying Startup OpenDoor Raises $9.95M From Everyone - lsh123
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/07/opendoor

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astrocat
Pure speculation: this is carmax for housing. Moving is like trading in your
car for a new one. They'll start with a focus on buying from the public to
build inventory then begin facilitating the end-to-end of sell-to-buy.

Imagine this: I need to move from, say, Columbus OH to St Louis MO (their
focus is not on hot markets). I browse their STL inventory online, pick the
house I want, sell them my house, click, click, click then go have a beer and
wait for the movers to show up.

Rabois has the money-moving chops from paypal and square... I don't see why
this isn't possible, aside from the nightmare of paperwork...

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jdross
Founder here. While facilitating the transaction is definitely a compelling
product offering and would be very fun to build, it's by no means necessary to
make the selling process dramatically better.

The crux of our business is pretty straightforward to reason about: Be
exceptional at valuing homes, maintain a low cost of capital, leverage
operational scale, and understand our customers.

