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Aggressive iBuyer Opendoor acquires title and escrow company
OS National’s 500 staff will join Opendoor
Following the announcement of its new home lending program, iBuyer Opendoor has acquired title and escrow company, OS National.
OS National specializes in residential and commercial title and settlement services. Its 500-member team will join Opendoor’s 1,300 employees in offices around the country.
The announcement marks the latest in a series of steps the SoftBank-backed iBuyer, most recently valued at $3.8 billion, has taken toward owning different parts of the buying and selling process. Its new lending program, Opendoor Home Loans, launched in Texas and Arizona last week.
“Consumers are confused about the status of the close and timeline, overwhelmed by hundreds of documents to understand and sign, and frustrated by the delays due to multiple parties coordinating,” said Eric Wu, co-founder and CEO of Opendoor, in a statement.
The acquisition was meant to make title and escrow “feel less like a barrier” in the home-buying process, he added.
Launched in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Opendoor operates in 20 cities across the country. It recently laid off 50 staffers and asked up to 300 remaining employees to move to its Phoenix office, where it planned to double its staff headcount over the next year.
In recent months, the company has also scaled back its free-lunch policy, however it said it would continue to offer subsidized lunches in its offices with more than 100 people.
The iBuyer secured $300 million in its latest funding round from investors including SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund — bringing its total equity funding to more than $1 billion.