Is The iBuyer Army Out of Control?

If you’re a North Texas homeowner, you likely know all about the iBuyer industry. With no shortage of spam calls, junk mailers, and even email offers, these companies constantly bombard homeowners begging to purchase their properties. But, aside from being an annoyance, new data shows these internet investors may be annihilating the market.

iBuyers Abound

Through 2021, iBuyers bought 70,400 houses nationwide. These are companies like Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor, and Offerpad. They use algorithms to estimate home values and easily generate offers with enormous investor reserves.

By using artificial intelligence in calculating offers, the companies miss the mark in many ways. Often, they over-valuate properties because they can’t see them individually. They buy based on comps and overlook inspections, causing disparities in what they pay versus what the property is worth.

Dallas is one of the top five locations where these investors are infiltrating. Also, Dallas has 5.2K homes listed on Opendoor, 1,112 properties on Redfin, and nearly 1,000 on Offerpad. And while these only make up a fraction of the market, the effects extend much further.

Recently, Zillow revealed it lost over $881 million and Opendoor lost $662 million in iBuyer pricing failures. This is both bad news for the companies and for homebuyers finding themselves outpriced by overestimated market rates.

What’s it like to buy from an iBuyer?

Shannon McDougal is a Realtor at Colleen Frost Realtors in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Recently, she had an experience purchasing a property from Offerpad.

“It’s a different transaction experience since you essentially work with a corporation rather than an individual,” says Shannon. “There is less human interaction or the ability for input by the buyer in the transaction. Therefore, it’s pretty much their way or the highway.”

Shannon speculates that our inventory shortage coupled with inflated iBuyer estimates could compound competition in her market.

“In the current market where there are only a couple of other homes for sale and one of them is priced according to OpenDoor or Offerpad the seller is likely to model after that,” says Shannon. “Which could affect prices in that neighborhood.”

With a market already fraught with the frustrations of low inventory and insanely high housing prices, it’s easy to see how the iBuyer model could make things worse. The question remains whether these companies are going to last or are just getting started. 

Have you worked with an iBuyer in a transaction? Tell us about it in the comments.