Opendoor is behind schedule. Since taking over the company a little over a year ago, CEO Kaz Nejatian has promised that the firm would achieve adjusted net income positive status on a 12-month go-forward basis by the end of 2026.
But the recent housing market downturn, triggered by the rapid rise in mortgage rates, has proven to be a bit of a roadblock. “We are currently behind but we intend to catch up,” the iBuyer’s third quarter 2026 earnings report explained.
During the quarter, Opendoor recorded an adjusted net loss of $66 million and an actual net loss of $218 million, up from a $90 million net loss a year ago. This comes even as the company reported a 12% annual increase in revenue to $1.022 billion.
“A year ago, I told you we would build a different Opendoor — faster, stronger, fully committed to our mission of tilting the world in favor of homeowners,” Nejatian said during his firm’s earnings call with investors and analysts on Thursday.
“We have spent the past year building a machine, and that machine is getting better every single day. We are not done yet. It is not perfect, but it is getting better every single day. The question is this: Is Opendoor in a better economic condition than it was a year ago? The answer is obviously yes.”
A more resilient Opendoor
Nejatian’s confidence comes from his belief that Opendoor has become more resilient over the past year. This includes ways in which the company has worked to serve more sellers without adding more homes to the company’s balance sheet.
“This past week, around half of the first offers our direct-to-consumer sellers accepted were listing or Cash Now, More Later. That lets us serve more sellers with less of our capital exposed to changes in the market,” Nejatian said.
In the past 12 months, the company has done over $1 billion in Cash Now, More Later volume.
“We have built more ways to meet sellers’ needs and have made it easier for them to understand their options and make the choice they want for their own lives,” Nejatian said. “Sellers can now adjust the offer slides and make the choice that is good for their families.”
Scaling without buying more homes?
Nejatian noted that every other time Opendoor has tried to scale, it has done so by purchasing more properties, but that isn’t the case this time.
“We proved that we can grow without buying growth. That’s the single most important thing that has happened over the last year. We’re changing that with our capital-light products,” Nejatian said.
Still, Opendoor did purchase far more homes in Q3 2026 than it did in Q3 2025, with a 316% year-over-year increase to 4,865 homes. The company’s signed acquisition volume represented an estimated 0.56% of market share in the addressable U.S. market in Q3 2026 — more than four times higher than a year ago.
On the sales side, Opendoor sold 2,728 homes, an increase of 160 homes compared to a year ago. At the end of the quarter, the iBuyer had 7,596 homes in its inventory, up from 3,139 homes a year ago. While the increase in inventory could be seen as cause for concern, especially heading into the slower winter housing market, Opendoor noted that homes listed for sale for 120 days represented just 18% of inventory at the end of the quarter, down from 50% a year ago.
Despite the progress, Nejatian said the company still has work left to do on unit economics and resale velocity, something it needs to focus on as it strives for more resiliency.
“We’re not as good as we want to be, but we’re in a much better place,” he said. “When the market moves against you and you own homes, there’s two things you can do. You can sell fast, or you can hold and wait and pray for the market to recover. We choose to clear.
“The decline in late August and September knocked us off track on execution a little bit because we turned our attention to clearance rather than margin improvement. It costs something real in a quarter like this, but that’s the right way to run this company for the long run.”
To help with some of these challenges, Nejatian said Opendoor has turned to AI to help improve speed while still scaling. Some of these tools include an AI model that determines repair plans for every home to hit the market. The company said the system has been outperforming the old process of following a standard repair manual.
Opendoor said it also built a system to help price homes. While humans still have final judgment, the software does the work of pulling applicable, comparable homes.
Ancillary services and the future
Nejatian also said that Opendoor is focusing on its mortgage division. In Q3, Opendoor said originations from its in-house lender were up 400% year over year. This comes as the iBuyer’s lender is now licensed in 25 states, compared to none a year ago.
In addition, the company also launched a beta test of Buy with Opendoor in the San Francisco Bay Area this week. The product allows the company to earn mortgage revenue on properties not affiliated with Opendoor in anyway.
Looking to the future, Nejatian said Opendoor is hoping to build out title and escrow services — not only to add more efficiencies to Opendoor’s in-house transactions but to add additional revenue streams by serving consumers not in its ecosystem.
“We need to grow, use less capital per transaction, and sell homes faster. Those are things we can control, and that is what we are focused on. What matters to us is solving the core problems of our business, and those are what we need to focus on,” Nejatian said.
