SoftBank-backed Opendoor has laid off 600 of its employees, which constitutes 35% of its workforce, TechCrunch reported. The company has raised $1.3 billion, and was most recently valued at $3.8 billion.
iBuying has ground to a halt: Opendoor, Offerpad, Zillow Offers, and Redfin Now have all ceased making offers on houses. The companies have all cited the difficulty of accurately pricing properties at this time.
Major concern as firms are stuck between buy and flip: These flippers have large inventories of unsold houses, and their values have certainly dropped.
Be Smart: New home listings were down about 27% from a year ago in the first week of April. That is far from typical for late March and early April. By comparison, new listings increased by an average of about 50% between March 1 and April 5 in 2018 and 2019. Overall, the total inventory of homes on the market across the country has increased by 2.5% since March 1, as properties sit on the market for longer, WSJ noted.