Zillow isn’t walking away from iBuying, after all.
The company announced a multi-year deal with Opendoor, by many measures the most successful iBuyer left standing after the pandemic price surge started slowing nation-wide last fall.
Opendoor added the Boston metro to the list of areas it serves in the second quarter, bringing the company to 51 markets.
As part of the deal, sellers will be able to request an offer from Opendoor through the Zillow site, although the exact details of how an offer could be requested were unclear from the companies’ announcement.
Zillow users will, however, be able to leverage existing company products like financing, closing assistance and real estate agent discovery as part of any sale to Opendoor.
A precise timeline for when the public would be able to begin asking for Opendoor offers was not announced.
“At Opendoor, we’re working to turn what is often viewed as one of life’s most stressful moments — the home move — into an e-commerce experience that’s simple, certain and fast. By bringing together Zillow’s market-leading audience and Opendoor’s e-commerce platform, more consumers will have the option to sell to Opendoor and save themselves the stress and uncertainty of a traditional sale process,” Opendoor President Andrew Low Ah Kee said in a statement. “For parents looking to upsize, a young professional moving for a new job, and millions of others who regularly use Zillow to explore their home selling options, we will provide them with the ability to move with a tap of a button.”
Zillow shuttered its own iBuyer business, Zillow Offers, in November 2021. The service’s price-setting algorithm failed to detect a slowdown in home price appreciation in the Sun Belt markets where it operated, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses when the company overpaid for thousands of houses.
