Nicole White wanted to join in this week from her family vacation in the Florida Keys, but the wifi at her vacation house is like AOL start-up—the worst Byron has ever seen.
So, for the first time on The Real Word, Byron Lazine is going solo to discuss the FTC crack-down on Opendoor—and a misleading report by Tangerine.ca on the 10 states where homes (allegedly) take the longest to sell.
FTC Takes Action against Opendoor Labs, Inc.
First up is a post on the FTC website detailing the action they’ve taken against Opendoor Labs, Inc. for cheating potential sellers with misleading claims about its “cutting edge” home-buying service—and costing them thousands of dollars.
Byron quoted Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection: “Opendoor promised to revolutionize the real estate market but built its business using old-fashioned deception… There’s nothing innovative about cheating consumers.”
Turns out their pomp and arrogance toward the real estate agent community had something darker at its root than insecurity. And now, their actions have caught up with them.
The really smart techs that are kind of in this space… they’re working with agents. They’re not hating on agents. Eric Woo and the boys and girls at Opendoor have absolutely just gone out of their way to crap on real estate agents… In fact, in 2019, the CEO said, “It’s good to be hated by some agents.”
Byron read a DM from a friend of the show (JD), who had a seller/buyer client go on “quite the journey” with Opendoor since January.
He also invited Opendoor to join the pod and talk about their plans from this point forward.
10 states where homes are taking the longest to sell
Next up is an Inman article on the “10 states where homes are taking the longest to sell,” with New York at the top of the list.
Here’s the full list, based on a Tangerine.ca report:
- New York—130.45 days (on average) to close
- Hawaii—118.82
- New Jersey—117.4
- West Virginia—113.44
- North Dakota—112.94
- Maryland—110.02
- Connecticut—107.96
- Mississippi—105.35
- Vermont—103.81
- Delaware—103
Byron went on the Connecticut MLS, according to which, it took 37 days on average for a house to go under contract in July. Add to that about 45 days to close a sale, for a total of 82 days. Median days on the Connecticut housing market is even lower at 19 days to go under contract.
According to the article, Tangerine.ca analyzed four years’ worth of data from Zillow. They didn’t talk to a single agent for this study—nor did they reference any of the MLSs for these states.
This is why, as agents, when we see a report like this, we need to absolutely go out there and shred it. Because this report doesn’t actually help sellers make a great decision about when to list their house or how long they can expect to be on the market…. When you’re not talking to one of [the knowledge brokers in the industry], this is the crap information that your consumers are absorbing.
Coming next week
Nicole will be back and the two will launch the new third segment of The Real Word.
We’ll also know who won the Inman Innovator Award for 2022. Byron has a strong feeling that Matt Lionetti and The Broke Agent will take the win this year for the Over Ask Podcast.
On Friday’s episode of the Byron Lazine Podcast, Byron may be talking to them both while they attend Inman Connect in Las Vegas.
Watch the full episode for more.
