After posting losses in 16 of the past 18 quarters, Opendoor implemented the latest in a string of layoffs on Wednesday, primarily on the iBuyer’s sales side, Inman has learned exclusively.
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Opendoor let go of another 40 employees on Wednesday in what the company is describing as a targeted restructuring within its sales operation as it seeks to reverse an ongoing string of losses and build new revenue streams outside of buying and selling houses, Inman has learned exclusively.
According to an internal email obtained by Inman and a confirmation from the company, Opendoor said it implemented its latest round of staff reductions as part of a shift to become a “multi-product, multi-channel” company.
The layoffs were the latest in a series of restructuring and maneuvers aimed at finding a path toward profitability and growth after the company rose to become the largest, and one of the only remaining large-scale, iBuyers.
“Yesterday, Opendoor implemented a small, targeted restructuring, primarily within our sales organization,” an Opendoor spokesperson told Inman. “This change reflects our continued shift toward a unified go-to-market strategy — one that brings sales, marketing and industry channels into tighter alignment.”
The restructuring included transitioning 70 more employees into unspecified new roles, the company said.
The changes were only the latest sign that Opendoor was continuing to evolve after years of challenges to its primary model of buying homes, rehabbing them and selling them, ideally at a profit.
Notably, Opendoor has been talking more about generating revenue through a program involving referrals with agents and other “asset-light” revenue streams.
“By integrating these functions, we’re building a more sales-centric organization that better supports both our direct-to-consumer and partner agent strategies,” Opendoor said. “It’s a deliberate step toward creating a leaner, more asset-light business — one that can serve more customers and scale with discipline.”
The latest shift follows a trend for the iBuyer, which has posted collective net losses of nearly $2.8 billion in the 18 quarters since going public in its quest to buy homes and sell them at a profit.
Cutting toward profitability?
But while the company scaled to become the largest within the iBuying sector, it has consistently struggled to post a profit and has in recent years sought to evolve beyond the core iBuying concept.
Opendoor has posted a profit during just two of the past 18 quarters, according to the company’s earnings reports dating back to the fourth quarter of 2020, when the company went public.
In that same time, other companies that also had significant iBuying segments — perhaps most notably Zillow — abandoned the attempt to profit from iBuying at scale.
Meanwhile, Opendoor’s cash and cash equivalents has fallen 76 percent from its peak in early 2022, when it was using some of its $2.3 billion to ramp up its home-buying efforts amid a red-hot market.
At the end of the third quarter of this year, when Opendoor reported an $85 million loss, the company had $559 million cash and cash equivalents.
Amid the slowdown, the company has shifted its members of leadership and trimmed staff in multiple rounds.
In April 2023, Opendoor lopped off 560 positions, or 22 percent of its workforce, as it weathered a sharp downward shift in the market after several years of growth.
Last year, the company announced it had let go of about 300 employees “as part of a reorganization aimed at prioritizing strategic growth and driving long-term efficiencies,” according to its annual earnings report released in February. Those layoffs followed a $78 million loss in the third quarter of 2024.
The company finished 2024 with 1,470 employees, it said in its annual earnings report. 1,128 of those employees were in the U.S., the company said at the time.
During the first three months of this year, Opendoor laid off another 65 employees, which it said represented 5 percent of its workforce at the time. Those figures suggest the company had 1,300 employees.
That would mean that, after Wednesday’s layoff, Opendoor has approximately 1,195 employees, a figure the company declined to confirm on Thursday.
If the upheaval wasn’t enough, Opendoor is also working to engineer its way out of a threat of a different kind.
Just last week, Opendoor announced that it was planning to implement a stock maneuver in an attempt to stay publicly listed on the Nasdaq Composite after its stock fell well below the $1 per share minimum in April and stayed there. On Thursday, Opendoor’s stock closed at $0.60 per share.
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