Opendoor Lays Off 300 After $78M Third Quarter Loss

Another significant quarterly loss has Opendoor slamming the door shut on hundreds of employees.

The iBuyer last week announced it was laying off 300 workers, or approximately 17 percent of the San Francisco-based company’s workforce.

It’s the third time in the last three years that Opendoor has enacted significant layoffs; more than 1,000 employees were affected by the cuts in 2022 and 2023. For this round, Opendoor is expected to save $50 million annually, though it will incur $17 million in expenses in the fourth quarter.

“In addition to reducing our costs, we are flattening our org structure to allow us to move faster and more efficiently,” Opendoor CEO Carrie Wheeler said during the earnings call, adding the cut is forecasted to deliver approximately $50 million in savings this year.

Opendoor lost $78 million in the third quarter — a smaller loss than in the second quarter and the third quarter of 2023, respectively. But the company’s cost-cutting mode includes $35 million in annual savings by separating from the Mainstay single-family rental platform. The iBuyer has also reduced its corporate office footprint by 75 percent in three years.

Opendoor purchased slightly more than 3,500 homes in the third quarter, a 27 percent drop from the second quarter. Meanwhile, it sold more than 3,600 homes, up 17 percent from the prior quarter and 35 percent year-over-year.

The company still counts nearly 6,300 homes in its portfolio. Almost a quarter of those have been on the market for at least 120 days, dragging down the business model based on quickly flipping homes. Profit per home sale is down to roughly $14,000 each.

Shares of Opendoor opened on Tuesday at $1.83. The stock has declined 57 percent year-to-date and 83 percent all-time.

— Holden Walter-Warner