After over a year of working as CEO, Opendoor’s Kaz Nejatian reported significant growth in revenue and market share during the iBuyer’s Q3 earnings call, and attributed the gains to a shift into AI infrastructure as the company says it has found ways to flip more homes without overpaying.
“This past quarter we rebuilt this entire system at Opendoor. We built an AI system that determines a specific repair plan for every single home before we buy it,” he stated. “Until August, our resale process was similar to literally everyone else in real estate. Pricing every home we owned basically lived in glorified spreadsheets with over 70 columns.”
As real estate incumbents have largely moved on from the iBuying craze that swept over the pandemic boom market, Opendoor has continued to push forward with a more nuanced approach to the model, offering a wider array of services to home sellers and partnerships with agents.
While acknowledging the company still has a long way to go, Nejatian is claiming the turnaround is working, even amid what he characterized as the worst years for housing “in a long time.”
“We’re winning the market without having to make riskier offers,” he said.
A lot of that comes from technology, along with a stronger focus on moving homes faster with less investment. Nejatian pointed out the differences between scaling with employees than with technology. He stated that increasing scale with the traditional method of buying homes involved hiring more employees, and a longer process.
“Rather than having people spending their days looking at pictures and doing mundane tasks, our people now each manage an army of agents,” he added. “In July, we had 5,400 homes. That’s 5,400 sellers sitting in a queue waiting for days for a human to confirm the price on their home. Two weeks ago, that queue was zero, and it will remain zero.”
He also homed in on the iBuyer’s new initiative—Buy with Opendoor—which launched in beta earlier this week. Although the Q3 earnings predates the program’s release, Opendoor CFO Christy Schwartz believes the initiative can open the company up to the broader market.
“Our emerging Buy with Opendoor offering can help buyers whether or not they’re buying a home from Opendoor,” she noted. “We see an opportunity to extend title and escrow to customers who aren’t buying or selling through Opendoor. Similar to listings, the offerings extend our reach beyond our home acquisition business and create opportunities to earn without taking ownership of a home.”
Previously, Nejatian came into the role with an aggressive turnaround mindset, touting an “Opendoor 2.0” initiative to bring the company back to significant profitability. The third quarter earnings may reflect the fruits of his labor, as homes purchased more than quadrupled.
“When a market slows down, companies are left with a cost structure and a system built for a different business. That’s the disease that Opendoor 2.0 is designed to cure,” he added. “That’s why I spend so much of my time on these calls talking about operator efficiency. When we say we’re investing in growth, we are building the capacity to handle the growth that will arrive.”
The earnings
Overall, Opendoor’s third quarter saw a revenue of $1.02 billion, up 12% from last year’s revenue of $915 million and up 16% from the previous quarter of $883 million.
The number of homes purchased skyrocketed as well, increasing by 316% year-over-year from 1,169 in 2025 to 4,865 in 2026.
At the same time, though, Nejatian acknowledged the company is “behind schedule” on reaching profitability by the end of the year, blaming the slow market.
Opendoor’s stock fell sharply after the report, down about 17% at press time.
Again, Nejatian posited that the increases in efficiency with AI infrastructure have contributed to Q3’s results.
“Not that long ago, around 80% of the assessments we did on homes required an Opendoor employee, which could take many weeks. Today, that 80% is 2%,” he said. “In Q3, we purchased more than four times as many homes as a year ago, and our operation expense was basically the same.”
Operation expenses per acquired home fell to $4,000, down 36% from last year’s expenses of $6,300. The marketing expenses per acquired home dropped at a higher rate, down 57% to $2,800, compared to 2025’s $6,500.
Mortgage originations—or the process in which a borrower goes through to receive a home loan—increased over 400% from quarter-to-quarter, although the Q3 earnings may not reflect the full weight of the Federal Reserve’s rate hike in mid-September. While the latest data does show mortgage rates inching down slowly each week, it’s unclear as to when rates will go below 7%.
“Historically, most of our economics have come from buying and reselling homes complimented by title and escrow,” Schwartz described. “Our emerging mortgage offerings allow us to earn more from each relationship while meeting a critical customer need and making the transaction easier.”
Opendoor’s EBITDA loss also improved slightly on a yearly basis. Q3 2026 had an EBITDA loss of $31 million, while last year had an EBITDA of $33 million. The adjusted EBITDA margin also decreased, now at 3% compared to last year’s margin of 3.6%. While better than last year, Schwartz acknowledged that the latest data is still far off from last quarter’s EBITDA loss of $4 million.
“Most of the sequential decline came from the homes we bought in the spring selling into a much weaker market along with deeper price cuts as we chose to clear rather than hold,” she said.
Looking to the future, Schwartz expects margins to decline again in the fourth quarter, and states that they will continue to sell through the remaining spring acquisitions into Q1 2027.
She also expects revenue to grow by at least 40% on a yearly basis in the next quarter. Although revenue may increase, Schwartz noted that marketing does contain a seasonal aspect, and operating expenses will likely increase due to investments and growth.
“Comparing year-over-year, roughly a third of the increase in our expected loss is the additional marketing, and the remaining two-thirds is primarily higher holding costs as we’ve been rebuilding our inventory,” she concluded.
“Our goal is to be adjusted net income positive on a 12-month-forward basis at the end of this year,” Nejatian continued. “We’re a bit behind on this today, but we’re going to go through some walls and catch up.”
