• Home
  • News
  • Fortune 500
  • Tech
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia
Tech

How to Trade In Your House

By
Kia Kokalitcheva
Kia Kokalitcheva
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Kia Kokalitcheva
Kia Kokalitcheva
Down Arrow Button Icon
March 9, 2016, 9:00 AM ET
109350668
For sale sign in yard of housePhotograph by Martin Barraud — Getty Images/OJO Images RF

Many home buyers need to sell their current house before they can complete their purchase, or even think about their next home.

Unfortunately, orchestrating both transactions can be complicated and often results in those who sold a home having to temporarily live in a rental home or hotel in between the transactions.

San Francisco startup Opendoor, which aims to make home buying and selling easier and faster, on Tuesday debuted a service that lets customers “trade in” their home for another one. As the term suggests, it’s designed for homeowners who are selling their current home in order to purchase and move into a new one.

“Some sellers won’t accept your offer if it’s contingent on your selling your other home,” Opendoor co-founder and CEO Eric Wu told Fortune of the challenges home buyers often face.

As Wu explained, the service was born out of existing customer needs and requests. More than half of Opendoor’s customers are selling their homes to the company because they’re looking for a new house, he said. To help with this, the startup makes them an offer for their current home, works with their next home’s real estate, title, and escrow agents to process everything, and lets them pick the date they want the sale to close so they can receive the funds when they need them.

Note that Opendoor’s trade-in customers must be selling a home in one of the company’s current markets—Phoenix and Dallas—though the home they want to purchase can be located anywhere in the U.S. It also slashes its fee by 2% if the seller purchases his or her next home through its service.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

Founded in 2014, Opendoor debuted its home-selling service in Phoenix in late 2014, and has since expanded to Dallas. The company has built its own pricing model, which mines public and private data to generate a fair offer price within minutes of the seller’s submission through its website. It charges 0-6% more than a traditional real estate agent and uses a credit line from an undisclosed financial institution to purchase the homes. Opendoor says one-third of home sellers who receive an offer from it accept. It then handles all the paperwork, and even the minor fixes and upgrades on the homes.

For buyers, it has designed a self-serve home-viewing system that lets buyers visit a listing at any time, which it claims results in 50 showings per home listing.

For more on real estate, watch:

That convenience and easy process is what impressed Opendoor trade-in customer Greg Starr of Phoenix the most. In early January, Starr began looking for a new house. By Feb. 5 (he estimates the entire process took roughly 27 days) he had moved into his freshly touched-up new home.

“It was just such a nice, easy process,” Starr told Fortune in a phone interview. “We sold a house before and it was hell,” he added.

In particular, Starr appreciated being able to offload his house to Opendoor without going through the hassle and inconvenience of showing it to prospective buyers. He and his wife were also able to avoid having to live at an extended-stay motel while looking for their new home, something they originally expected to have to do before they stumbled upon Opendoor when they contacted a home listing’s agent.

“They went over there, appraised it, and then came back with an offer, and it was right on what I was hoping, and then a bit more,” Starr said with a laugh about Opendoor’s offer for his previous home.

Currently, Opendoor buys about $25 million worth of homes in Phoenix every month and $10 million worth in Dallas. By the end of the year, the company hopes to expand to three additional markets. To date, Opendoor has raised $110 million in funding.

About the Author
By Kia Kokalitcheva
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

InnovationBrainstorm Design
Video games can teach designers deeper lessons than ‘high score streaks’ and gamification
By Angelica AngDecember 3, 2025
2 hours ago
LawInternet
A Supreme Court decision could put your internet access at risk. Here’s who could be affected
By Dave Lozo and Morning BrewDecember 2, 2025
11 hours ago
AITikTok
China’s ByteDance could be forced to sell TikTok U.S., but its quiet lead in AI will help it survive—and maybe even thrive
By Nicholas GordonDecember 2, 2025
11 hours ago
United Nations
AIUnited Nations
UN warns about AI becoming another ‘Great Divergence’ between rich and poor countries like the Industrial Revolution
By Elaine Kurtenbach and The Associated PressDecember 2, 2025
13 hours ago
Anthropic cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei
AIEye on AI
How Anthropic’s safety first approach won over big business—and how its own engineers are using its Claude AI
By Jeremy KahnDecember 2, 2025
13 hours ago
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang reacts during a press conference at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Gyeongju on October 31, 2025.
AINvidia
Nvidia CFO admits the $100 billion OpenAI megadeal ‘still’ isn’t signed—two months after it helped fuel an AI rally
By Eva RoytburgDecember 2, 2025
15 hours ago

Most Popular

placeholder alt text
Economy
Ford workers told their CEO 'none of the young people want to work here.' So Jim Farley took a page out of the founder's playbook
By Sasha RogelbergNovember 28, 2025
5 days ago
placeholder alt text
Success
Warren Buffett used to give his family $10,000 each at Christmas—but when he saw how fast they were spending it, he started buying them shares instead
By Eleanor PringleDecember 2, 2025
21 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Economy
Elon Musk says he warned Trump against tariffs, which U.S. manufacturers blame for a turn to more offshoring and diminishing American factory jobs
By Sasha RogelbergDecember 2, 2025
15 hours ago
placeholder alt text
C-Suite
MacKenzie Scott's $19 billion donations have turned philanthropy on its head—why her style of giving actually works
By Sydney LakeDecember 2, 2025
22 hours ago
placeholder alt text
North America
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos commit $102.5 million to organizations combating homelessness across the U.S.: ‘This is just the beginning’
By Sydney LakeDecember 2, 2025
17 hours ago
placeholder alt text
AI
More than 1,000 Amazon employees sign open letter warning the company's AI 'will do staggering damage to democracy, our jobs, and the earth’
By Nino PaoliDecember 2, 2025
23 hours ago
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • Future 50
  • World’s Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
Sections
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Success
  • Tech
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Environment
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Health
  • Retail
  • Lifestyle
  • Politics
  • Newsletters
  • Magazine
  • Features
  • Commentary
  • Mpw
  • CEO Initiative
  • Conferences
  • Personal Finance
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
About Us
  • About Us
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Diversity And Inclusion
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map

© 2025 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.