Scramble is back on to become Amazon of home sales

When Opendoor, Zillow Offers and other "iBuyers" popped up in the Twin Cities and around the country a few years ago, they hoped to upend the traditional homebuying process by doing for real estate what Amazon did for online shopping by using technology to eliminate all the hassles and uncertainties of buying and selling a house. That included offering sellers "instant" online offers on properties the companies would later resell.

But this spring, with the pandemic bearing down on the economy and the future of the real estate market uncertain, those iBuyers stopped buying, interrupting efforts to disrupt an industry that has long relied on face-to-face interactions. But now they are back at a time when there's a shortage of house listings and properties are selling in record time, prompting some analysts to say the promise of an instant offer isn't enough.

"Overall, iBuyers are struggling in this high-demand, low-inventory market," said Mike DelPrete, a global real estate tech strategist. "The consumer proposition of an instant offer is less relevant and appealing now than it's been in the past."

Opendoor and at least a half-dozen players in the iBuyer space, including Zillow Offers, RedfinNow and Offerpad, said that to make the model more relevant they have retooled the buying and selling process with new systems aimed at eliminating face-to-face contact between buyers and sellers.

And in an effort to raise more cash, Opendoor recently made its case to investors. Last week Opendoor started trading on the New York Stock Exchange after an initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion just weeks after announcing a national expansion including the Rochester, Minn., market.

The iBuyer model is the product of tech companies that have built national websites that feature house listings and real estate data that's gleaned from multiple listing services and public records. Those companies are using that information to create complicated algorithms based on recent local sales of comparable properties that enable them to quickly determine the value of a property without an initial visual inspection.

Instead of a traditional real estate commission, sellers pay iBuyers a fee that's negotiated before the sale. After acquiring the property the iBuyer does minor repairs before listing the house for more than they paid.

"It was painless," said iBuyer customer Amanda Broz. "I couldn't imagine going the traditional sales route with two little kids and being so busy in our careers."

When she and her husband, Dave Broz, decided they needed a bigger house, they wanted to know how much their house might be worth. They went to Zillow.com, which provides home-value estimates, and clicked on the "instant offer" button.

They had no intention of doing of a virtual sale, but when they received an instant offer just a couple of days later, they decided to play it through. The promise of not having to ready the house for sale and being able to set a closing date based on when the new house they were buying would be ready was enticing.

"Maybe we could have gotten a few thousand dollars more [via a traditional sale], but it's hard to know," she said. "And we didn't do one repair to our house or touch up paint or fill nail holes. We literally just walked out of the house. We didn't even have to clean it."

Such deals account for just a fraction of all real estate transactions nationwide, according to an analysis of MLS and public records by real estate transactions by Redfin, which operates its own iBuyer platform via RedfinNow.

The Twin Cities metro was on par with the national average for the share of iBuyer purchases, but had one of the biggest annual declines in iBuyer activity with the number of homes bought by iBuyers during the third quarter falling 86% compared with last year.

In March, Zillow, Redfin and others halted home purchases because of local and state coronavirus shutdowns but also because of uncertainty in the housing market.

Jim Lesinski, Minnesota general manager at Opendoor, said that during the shutdown the company updated its process to make it fully digital and contact-free for sellers. That included new virtual interior home assessments, enabling the seller to walk Opendoor reps through their home via video.

"Today, we're seeing consumers more widely adopt digital solutions," he said.

He said the recent expansion to Rochester was a logical next step for the company because the housing types are similar to the Twin Cities. Because of Rochester's proximity to the Twin Cities, the expansion can be managed with existing staff from the Twin Cities.

DelPrete said Opendoor's expansion was likely fueled by the prospect of its IPO.

"From an optics standpoint, it needs to demonstrate growth," he said. "One way it can do that is by launching new markets, and most of the new markets it is launching are smaller, "satellite" markets near existing markets."

He said that while the consumer proposition of an instant offer might appear to be less relevant than it has been in the past, Opendoor, Zillow, Offerpad and all iBuyers are very slowly recovering.

"I believe iBuying is here to stay," he said. "It remains a unique customer proposition for a segment of homeowners and solves friction in the process. But the path to success and profitability is a long, uncertain road."

Michael Heller, the general manager for Zillow Offers in the Twin Cities, said it has restarted acquisitions in all Zillow Offers markets and launched its 25th new market in September. It also adopted its own "Move Forward. Stay Safe" protocols that were developed in consultation with a former U.S. surgeon general.

"Low inventory makes it hard to find a home," Lindahl said. "And it's scary for a lot of people to sell when they don't yet know where their next home will be."

He's not yet certain the model can overtake the traditional approach to selling but likens the growing acceptance of the concept to online grocery and car purchases.

"It's not perfect for everyone, but more and more people are becoming comfortable with embracing technology to make big transactions," Lindahl said. "At its core, buying or selling a home is still a very emotional transaction for most people. So, even as iBuying grows, it has to remain a very personalized experience."