Opendoor, a house-flipping startup, has raised $325 million in a new fundraising round. The money raised will go towards expanding its team and increasing their market to fifty new markets.
With this newest round of Series E funding, the San Francisco-based company’s valuation has passed $2 billion. Opendoor previously raised $210 million in its Series D funding round just 18 months ago.
Opendoor offers a unique way of buying and selling homes. The homeowners put their information on the site and receive an offer from the startup, usually within 48 hours. Opendoor then makes any necessary repairs and renovations and then sells the houses directly on its own marketplace. Because of the convenience of using this service over a listing agent, homeowners pay Opendoor a small fee of about 1 to 1.5% above what a traditional real estate agent would charge.
Oopendoor first began in Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth in 2014 but has since expanded to 10 markets, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Nashville, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh-Durham, Tampa, and San Antonio. In its current ten market, Opendoor says they purchase more than $2.5 billion worth of homes annually.
Opendoor is also launching a program “Trade Up” in partnership with Lennar, the nation’s largest home builder. The program allows a homeowner to sell their home to Opendoor and then buy a newly built home by Lennar, all in one transaction.
“Our goal is to allow people to buy and sell real estate without any friction online,” said Chief Executive Officer Eric Wu. “That’s really what the capital is going towards — how do we start to build the future of real estate, how do we start to reinvent the experience end to end?”
Wu says they are planning on doubling their 650 employees by the end of next year and they will be investing significantly in its data science team.
