After its ride on the meme stock rollercoaster and the resignation of its CEO, Opendoor has indicated it is ready to start a new chapter, one that will ideally bring it back to profitability, but activist retail investors are asking that they get a say in the firm’s next moves. 

Opendoor’s eventful summer began in late June, when its stock hit an all-time low of $0.51 per share. This caught the attention of investor and hedge fund owner Eric Jackson. Back in 2022, Jackson said he identified Opendoor and used car sales platform Carvana as two technology stocks with the ability to come back from the technology stock downturn. Between 2022 and 2025, Carvana’s stock rebounded from an all-time low of roughly $4 per share to nearly $400 per share. During the same time frame, Opendoor’s stock price simply declined. 

This, combined with interest from other retail investors, prompted Jackson to make a post on social media platform X on July 14, in which he outlined his thesis for the possible resurgence of Opendoor. In the X thread he argued that the iBuyer was “giving early Carvana vibes,” and that factors like its lack of major domestic competitors, its anticipated EBITDA profit in Q2 and a potential Federal Reserve rate cut in September made it a compelling investment, although not one for the faint of heart. 

“One of the things that helped Carvana was flipping over to EBITDA profitability, and then with the expected rate cut and Opendoor’s seller traffic, I just felt like Opendoor would have this tailwind behind it,” Jackson said. “We are now so used to Uber being the way we do taxis and Airbnb being how we book travel accommodation, to me it felt obvious that real estate is a huge market that is ready to be disintermediated and yet nobody had really done it yet, but Opendoor has the potential to do it.”

Your move, Opendoor

For its part, Opendoor has made it clear it has three main focuses as it looks to right the ship: Cash Plus, Key Connections and leveraging AI. 

Launched in late July 2025, Cash Plus provides sellers access to “a significant portion” of their home’s value in as little as 14 days. Sellers can also gain additional money after the home is sold. However, the program is only available to sellers working with Key Agents. 

Real estate analyst and attorney Rob Hahn feels that Cash Plus will allow Opendoor to pay less than market value for a property, helping it cut costs. Hahn notes, however, that once Opendoor purchases the home, the consumer is no longer the home seller, so they have no control over the eventual list price, which means that the consumer is assuming an immense amount of risk, as Opendoor could potentially sell the property for far less than the homeowner was hoping for, meaning that they net less money than anticipated. 

In addition to Cash Plus, Opendoor announced Key Connections, an expanded version of its agent partnership program in late June, roughly around the same time its stock price hit rock bottom. Instead of having an Opendoor employee reach out to a seller who has indicated interest in working with Opendoor, the program pairs sellers with an agent who can provide options to homeowners beyond merely accepting the company’s flagship cash offer.

During the firm’s Q2 2025 earnings call in early August, then CEO Carrie Wheeler said the program puts “the power of Opendoor into their hands so they can bring our products straight to the seller.”

Although Opendoor appears to be lauding this as a major strategy pivot, Hahn notes on his NotoriousROB blog that the iBuyer has been selling home seller leads to agents since at least 2015. Additionally, Hahn highlighted the Agent Access program, which launched in 2021, that rewarded agents depending on the number of seller leads they sent to Opendoor each year. This was expanded in 2023, when Opendoor began paying agents who sent a seller to the platform even if they did not represent the seller in the transaction. 

Hahn sees this pivot as Opendoor moving away from its original aim of eventually creating a platform for homesellers and buyers to interact directly with one another. 

“So much for the original vision and mission of Opendoor, eh? Selling a home is slow, fragmented, and unpredictable… but agents are the glue in the process!” Hahn wrote, referencing a statement Opendoor made in a post about Key Connections. “In effect, then, Opendoor is exiting iBuying. Opendoor is transforming into a lead generation website and its customers going forward are not sellers or buyers, but real estate agents who pay them a referral fee.”

Investors don’t want agents in the middle

Jackson, who hopes to see Opendoor become the Uber or Airbnb of homebuying and selling with sellers and buyers interacting directly with one another through the platform, has mixed feelings on the company bringing agents into the middle of a transaction.

“I mean it makes sense that right now they are looking for revenue any way they can,” Jackson said. “They have to become this trusted brand, like an Uber, and become this interface between the two sides, which allows them to take on very little financial risk, but in the medium or long term I think that means they will disintermediate the agents.”

Although Jackson realizes that the majority of homebuyers today use a real estate agent to purchase a home, he says that younger shareholders who are hoping to someday purchase a home want to see agents removed from the homebuying transaction, as they feel they are driving up costs, making them willing to bet on the potential rebound of Opendoor. 

Additionally, Jackson said he hears from retail investors all over the world who want to see meaningful change to how real estate is transacted, as they feel “local greedy real estate cartels” are driving up costs and making housing unaffordable. 

AI will improve efficiency with fewer employees

While Jackson is not a fan of Opendoor bringing agents into the center of the transaction, he is a big supporter of the company’s exploration into leveraging AI.

“I think there is a huge opportunity for them to leverage AI in what they do. They are horribly oversized today with like 1,400 employees, but they could dramatically lower that if they leaned into AI,” he said.

In an article by “Opendoor Engineering” published earlier this month, the company said that it wants to leverage AI to deliver products personalized to their buyers and sellers at scale, and it believes that AI usage will allow it to “reinvent real estate through our platform centered around our Key Agent partners.”

While the article mentions a few AI tools the company has, including RiskAI, which it claims is able to “pinpoint complex unstructured factors and incorporate them into detailed competitive market analyses,” it remains unclear as to what other AI use cases Opendoor is exploring.

A long road ahead

In addition to AI integrations, Jackson and other retail investors are also calling for major changes to Opendoor’s board of directors.

“I’m trying to get Keith Rabois, the venture capitalist who wrote the original business plan for Opendoor, to come back on the board and be part of the group that selects the next CEO,” he said. 

Although Jackson acknowledges that it may be a long road ahead, he believes that Opendoor is capable of seeing its stock jump 100x to $82 a share.

“They need to really push into building up this pool of buyers and sellers more proactively, so they can be this interface matching brand in between the parties, but finding the right person to serve as the next CEO is key because they are going to have to drive all of this,” Jackson said. “If you get the wrong person, it dooms you to five years of dithering, but in some cases can lead to almost total erasure of the company.”

Foolhardy optimism?

But while retail investors like Jackson are keen on Opendoor’s stock and optimistic about a potential resurgence, analysts like Julian Lin, are not so sure. 

In an op-ed published on Seeking Alpha, Lin, the leader of investing group Best of Breeds Growth Stocks, wrote that he believes the recent stock rally is driven by meme hype and not market fundamentals and compares the situation to rapid rise and fall of GameStop stock in January 2021. Due to this, Lin says that investing in Opendoor is “highly speculative” right now and that he is “unconvinced” by the iBuying model.

While Lin acknowledges that Opendoor returned to adjusted EBITDA profitability in Q2 2025, he notes that the company only did so after “aggressive cost cutting.” 

“It is possible that OPEN can change up its business model and become one in which they simply charge a small fee to help facilitate each real estate transaction. However, such a move would be a significant shift from the current model, and I do not see any reason why this particular company would be able to claim such a valuable positioning, especially when more established housing names like Zillow Group, Inc. might come to mind,” he wrote.

“Perhaps investors are hoping that OPEN can earn a fee for providing an offer, for example, such that sellers can then market the offer to get a higher price (this would be the value-add for home sellers). In this case, I do not see the barriers to entry as any well-capitalized firm in theory should be able to compete.”

Opendoor did not return requests for comments on questions about criticisms of its stock and programs, and how it plans to handle the pressure and requests from the activist retail investor movement. 

Credit bureau TransUnion disclosed Wednesday that a July cyberattack compromised the personal data of more than 4.4 million consumers, according to a filing with the Office of the Maine Attorney General.

In a letter to affected customers, the company stressed that the breach did not involve its core systems or credit files. Instead, hackers gained “unauthorized access to some of your personal data that was stored on a third-party application. Importantly, no credit information was accessed.”  

TransUnion did not identify the vendor involved, but a spokesperson sent a statement to HousingWire, saying the company “identified and contained this event within hours.”

“TransUnion recently experienced a cyber incident that affected a third-party application serving our U.S. consumer support operations. Upon discovery, we quickly contained the issue, which did not involve our core credit database or include credit reports,” the statement read.
“The incident involved unauthorized access to limited personal information for a very small percentage of U.S. consumers. We are working with law enforcement and have engaged third party cyber security experts for an independent forensics review. Additionally, we will notify affected consumers and provide credit monitoring services.”

The breach, which happened on July 28, was detected within two days. Nationwide, roughly 4.4 million individuals were affected, including 16,828 in Maine. The company also filed disclosures in California.

TransUnion said the exposed information was limited to “specific data elements” and did not include credit reports or other core credit information. 

The Illinois-based bureau is offering affected consumers two years of free credit monitoring through its myTrueIdentity service, as well as fraud assistance.

TransUnion manages more than 1 billion consumer profiles worldwide, including 200 million in the U.S. Roughly one-third of its revenue comes from mortgage companies. 

The disclosure comes eight years after rival Equifax revealed a 2017 data breach that potentially compromised the records of 143 million U.S. consumers. The sector remains a prime target for hackers because of the sensitive financial and personal information it holds.

Editor’s note: This story was updated with a statement from TransUnion.

Investor housing market activity slipped in the second quarter of 2025 but remains above recent historical averages, according to a new report from Cotality.

Investors accounted for 32% of single-family home purchases in January, the report said. By June, the share had fallen to 29%.

A year earlier, investors represented 25% of the market.

“Investors expanded their market presence significantly in 2025, building on historically high levels,” said Thom Malone, principal economist at Cotality. “This demonstrates their resilience in a high-price, high-rate environment. As these adverse conditions are expected to persist, investors are well positioned to meet rental demand.

“Their tendency to buy with all cash means high interest rates are less of a deterrent. Plus, current high prices can be offset by strong rental returns.”

Cotality’s data show investors purchased about 85,000 homes each month in the first half of 2025, nearly the same as the 84,000 monthly average a year earlier.

That level remains well below the peak of 120,000 monthly purchases seen in 2022, but investor share has increased as owner-occupied transactions have slowed.

Medium-sized investors — defined as those holding between 10 and 99 properties — have driven much of the growth. Their share rose from 6% of purchases in June 2024 to 10% in June 2025.

Small investors — with fewer than 10 properties — continue to make up the largest group at 14%. Large investors (101–1,000 properties) accounted for 3% of sales, while mega investors with more than 1,000 properties represented 2%.

Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix and Los Angeles had the highest number of investor purchases.

Dallas led in total investor transactions but ranked only 10th in investor share.

Los Angeles, by contrast, had a relatively high share despite lower overall transaction volume.

When measured by share rather than raw totals, only Los Angeles and Atlanta ranked in the top five for both categories.

In most metropolitan areas, small investors made up about 15% of the market, while variations in total share were driven by medium, large and mega investors.

The report noted that Atlanta’s investor share would drop out of the top 20 without mega-investor participation.

Investor activity has followed a seasonal pattern, typically rising during the winter and falling in the summer as more owner-occupants enter the market.

Unless broader economic conditions change, Cotality expects investors to continue making up 25% to 30% of purchases in the near future.

Townsville residents Jobichan Vargheese and Soumya Jobichan chose to stay local when buying their first investment property, after seeing how much their family home increased in value after just four years.

The couple bought a block of land in a new estate in the Townsville suburb of Rasmussen, sitting a few kilometres from their Douglas home.

“I was considering buying in Brisbane or Melbourne at first, but after talking to friends, builders and property brokers, I could see the opportunity was right here in Townsville,” Mr Vargheese said.

“The value of my own home has increased significantly in just a few years, and with the university, hospital, and growing population nearby, the Somers & Hervey estate is in a prime position for strong rental demand and capital growth.”

Mr Vargheese said the value of the Douglas home surged $660,000 to about $1m since it was built four years ago.

“That gave me confidence that investing here was the right decision for us,” the healthcare worker said.

Urbex Realty general manager, Craig Covacich said Mr Vargheese’s story reflected a broader trend of locals choosing to invest in the Townsville property market.

“We’re seeing a growing number of first-time investors like Jobichan who recognise the long-term potential of Townsville, not only as a place to live, but as a place to invest,” he said.

Jobichan Vargheese and Soumya Jobichan pictured at their Douglas home. Picture: Shae Beplate.

ATO data released this year revealed the Townsville region was home to more than 15,000 individuals who declared a rental income on their tax return.

The highest number (2977) was in the 4814 postcode, which included The Vargheese’s suburb of Douglas as well Aitkenvale, Heatley and Mount Louisa.

That worked out to be about 10 per cent of residents living in that postcode.

While in the 4810 postcode, which included the prestige suburbs of West End, Rowes Bay and North Ward, almost 15 per cent of residents (2162) declared a rental income.

Mr Vargheese said he and his wife would soon begin building their investment property, with land expected to title in September.

“This is just the beginning for us,” he said.

“We’re taking it step by step, but if this investment goes well, we’ll definitely look at expanding our investment portfolio in the future.

“For us, it made sense to invest right here at home.

“You have a growing city, a relaxed lifestyle, and so many beautiful destinations nearby like Cairns, Airlie Beach, and the Great Barrier Reef.”

Urbex’s new development Somers and Hervey in Rasmussen. Picture: Supplied

Mr Vargheese said factors including population growth, infrastructure investment, strong rental demand and proximity to key employment hubs like the hospital and university were also deciding factors in picking Townsville as a place to invest.

“Townsville has the lifestyle benefits of a quiet, spacious city but also offers all the essentials like jobs, education, healthcare, and future development,” he said.

“There are many people moving here, especially for work, and demand for rentals is very strong.

“I know so many families, particularly from my own community, who are relocating to Townsville for the opportunities here.”

Mr Covacich said Townsville offered excellent value compared to our capital city markets, with some of the strongest rental yields in Queensland.

REIQ figures showed the Townsville vacancy rate had hovered around 1 per cent since December 2022.

Property data found Townsville’s rental yields were sitting around 5 per cent, while nationally that figure was about 3.5 per cent.

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Frustrated property investment professionals have warned the government amid tax data showing the nation’s biggest landlord hub is in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Victorian tenants are being evicted from their homes as banks repossess properties from investor owners amid a surge in the share of the state’s landlords losing money.

Latest tax figures have revealed upwards of 324,000 (55 per cent) of the state’s more than 580,000 property investors are propping their portfolios up with negative gearing — a figure almost unparalleled around the nation.

Data from just two years prior shows less than half Victoria’s individual income tax returns that disclosed rental income were reporting a loss, with the total a whopping $3.2bn, prompting concerns from property experts that more recent tax hikes are risking renters’ homes.

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And a leading tenant advocacy group has warned evictions as a result mortgagee sales are on the rise.

The state has become the epicentre of a battle between investor ownership rights and renters’ rights to a roof over their head, with Australia’s highest protections for tenants and the biggest tax burden for landlords.

Latest tax data, for the 2023 financial year which was released in June, shows Victoria is also now the nation’s second most negatively geared state or territory by both the number of investors losing money, behind NSW, and the share who are taking a financial hit to own an investment, behind the ACT.

29 The Avenue, Caroline Springs, sold for $680,000 in November, 2022, and was leased out for $400 a week at the time. Many landlords living in the suburb own investments there too.

Australia’s most populous landlord postcode is 3030, which covers Werribee and Point Cook where more than 12,500 property investors live, according to individual tax return data. Almost 9000 (71 per cent) reported a net rent loss in the 12 month period. It’s up from 66 per cent in 2021.

Melbourne’s next entry on the list was also the nation’s third most populous postcode for landlords, with 3029, the Hoppers Crossing area, hosting 11,072 individuals who included rental income in their tax return — more than 8000 of them taking a loss.

Property Investment Professionals of Australia chair Lachlan Vidler said the “surprising” data showed a different view of who investors were compared to government claims they were wealthy.

“It’s not your white collar high income professionals, it’s very much that mum and dad belt,” Mr Vidler said.

Where The Landlords Live

Point Cook, Werribee (3030) — 12,572

Hoppers Crossing, Tarneit (3029) — 11,072

Glen Waverley, Wheelers Hill (3150) — 10,851

Cranbourne (3977) — 7,961

Craigieburn, Donnybrook (3064) — 7,571

5 Parkhaven St, Craigieburn, sold in July 2022 for $584,000 — at the time it was leased on a month-to-month basis.

Burnside, Caroline Springs (3023) — 5,786

Berwick, Harkaway (3806) — 5,776

Mt Waverley, Syndal (3149) — 5,688

Ballarat (3350) — 5,105

Wantirna, Wantirna South (3152) — 4,831

Postcodes with highest number of individual tax returns declaring net rent income.

Source: Taxation Statistics 2022-2023, ATO

He said with rents having risen substantially across most of the rest of the nation since the 2023 tax year, governments at all levels needed to rethink their approach to rental homes and investors.

“They (the government) do have a huge obligation as they can physically provide some of that accommodation, but they can also create policies that make things better, or worse,” he said.

“But when the government sentiment always seems to be to attack investors, or there’s a fear that the laws will be changed or altered every few years, it doesn’t set up a situation where the government is seen to be valuing the contributions of the private investors.”

1 Sunnyside Drive, Berwick, sold for $673,500 in May, 2023. At the time it was leased for $410 a week.

Tenants Victoria chief executive Jennifer Beveridge said that in more recent times they had noted an increase in renters being evicted after the bank repossessed their home from a landlord.

“It’s a terrible experience, because too often they haven’t been kept informed,” Ms Beveridge said.

“We have heard examples from renters who have had the sheriff turn up to their home without any prior warning, and renters who were made to move out at very short notice.”

The tenants’ advocate said high levels of investors relying on negative gearing in an area could be concerning, where they did not understand costs beyond paying the mortgage and that renters have a right to a home that’s in good repair and meeting minimum standards.

Tenants Victoria chief executive Jennifer Beveridge says they are seeing rising numbers of evictions as landlords have homes seized by their bank.

Real Estate Institute of Australia president Leanne Pilkington said the high levels of negative gearing among Victorian landlords was also a sign that the mum and dad investors who had been relied on for decades might not have the capacity to provide more rental homes amid rising population.

With the corporate landlords behind build-to-rent not yet able to cover a significant portion of the market, Ms Pilkington said the government might have to fill the void.

“There’s not really other options than for the government to build more social and affordable housing,” Ms Pilkington said.

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