San Francisco-based iBuyer bought and sold more homes during Q3 than last year and reduced its net loss by 14 percent from Q2 and 26 percent from last year.
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Opendoor is laying off 300 employees — about 17 percent of its workforce — as it continues to struggle with the housing market, the company said Thursday when it reported a third-quarter loss of $78 million.
San Francisco-based iBuyer bought and sold more homes during Q3 than last year, and keeping a lid on the company’s operating costs helped reduce its net loss by 14 percent from Q2 and 26 percent from last year.
With home sales up 35 percent from last year to 3,615, Opendoor saw revenue grow 41 percent over the same period to $1.37 billion. Operating expenses decreased 2 percent from Q3 2023 to $172 million.
Opendoor also beat previous guidance for Q3 purchases, which increased home purchases by 12 percent from a year ago to 3,503, despite “an ongoing housing market,” CEO Carrie Wheeler said. The company ended the quarter with 6,288 homes valued at $2.1 billion in inventory, down 4 percent from June 30.
“In August, many expected that interest rate cuts would bring buyers and sellers back into the market,” Wheeler said in a statement. “However, mortgage rates remain stubbornly high and the housing market continues to be challenged by foreclosures, low foreclosures, and unaffordability.”
Shares of Opendoor, which last year traded as low as $1.58 and as high as $4.89, closed at $1.87 on Thursday before earnings were announced and briefly rose more than $2 in after-hours trading.
Opendoor has now racked up losses of $3.61 billion since its initial public offering in Phoenix in 2014. It’s a smaller company than in 2022 when it sold 39,183 homes, but it’s also losing less money.
After a $1.35 billion loss in 2022, Opendoor last year cut home purchases to 11,246 and laid off 680 employees, reducing its 2023 net loss to $275 million.
Opendoor continues to look for ways to cut costs, announcing in August that it was relaunching its single-family rental platform, Mainstay, with Khosla Ventures leading an investment raise to fund the platform as a private company.
“We’re focusing on what we can control, running our business efficiently, and streamlining our cost structure while managing risk,” Wheeler said Thursday. “The combination of actions we took in the second half of this year will result in annual savings of approximately $85 million as we move into 2025. With a streamlined organization and continuous improvements to our core products, we are well positioned to scale the business. as conditions improve.”
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