Anyone here due some cash? Beware of the online home buyers. If they change the price on you after you reach a deal, walk away. No. Run away.
Nearly 2,500 California homeowners who sold their homes to Opendoor Labs are getting payments from a $62 million settlement after the FTC found they were deceived by the company’s marketing claims.
The FTC’s online settlement tracker shows California home sellers are getting a median refund of $1,553 after the company “tricked them into thinking that they could make more money selling their home to Opendoor than on the open market.”
An FTC investigation found that home sellers who used Opendoor lost money.
“In reality, most people who sold to Opendoor made thousands of dollars less than they would have made selling their homes using the traditional process, and many paid more in costs than what sellers typically pay,” the FTC said in a statement Wednesday.
The FTC complaint said Opendoor charts marketed to prospective sellers “almost always showed that consumers would make thousands of dollars more by selling to Opendoor.”
Instead, sellers spent thousands more on service fees, and their home’s market value often “included downward adjustments.”
The premise of Opendoor’s marketing was that homeowners could skip the costs of fixing, listing, and showing a home by selling it to Opendoor using an online app instead.
Nothing is easy, if it is, you are getting the shaft.