Ken Duke

Dear @opendoor (cc @nejatian @morganb @dangreenoh) I'm a shareholder and genuinely bullish on Opendoor's ability to disrupt real estate transactions, but disruption and profitability are two very different things, and I'd love some clarity on the path to the latter. Here's what I'm wrestling with: IBuying is inherently a thin margin business, and you've been transparent about wanting to be a high-velocity market maker with tight spreads. I respect that vision. But the math only works if ancillary services — title, escrow, mortgage — carry real margin weight. As far as I can tell, that's always been the thesis for why the bundle matters. I've read your mortgage rate explanation, and I get the vision. You're doing to mortgage what E*TRADE did to stock trading and TurboTax did to taxes — eliminating the legacy cost structure through automation and AI, and passing those savings to buyers instead of pocketing them. That's a compelling consumer proposition! But here's my question as a shareholder: if IBuying runs on thin margins by design, and mortgage is structured to pass savings to consumers rather than generate margin for Opendoor, where does the meaningful margin actually come from? Title and escrow help at the edges, but I'm struggling to see what the high-margin wedge is in the long-term model. A few specific things I'd love management to address: 1. Is the thesis that Opendoor ultimately succeeds as a high-volume, single-digit gross margin business, and if so, what does the unit economics picture look like at scale? 2. Will mortgages be held on the balance sheet or sold? That changes the risk and return profile significantly. 3. Is there a future services layer — beyond title, escrow, and mortgage — that's intended to be a genuine profit center? I'm bullish on the team and the model, but I want to understand the explicit plan for how margin builds over time, not just how costs come down for consumers. Would appreciate hearing management's long-term margin architecture laid out plainly. I don't think I'm the only shareholder asking. Sincerely, $OPEN Shareholder

In our chat @bhalligan asked me to talk about my principles. We talked about the top two, but I thought I should share with you the top 5. Here they are: nejatian.com/principles I only write down principles where I think I am meaningfully different than other folks. I write these down to remind myself of the key lessons I need to apply. I find it helpful to always keep these in my personal context window.

Dear @opendoor (cc @nejatian @morganb @dangreenoh) I'm a shareholder and genuinely bullish on Opendoor's ability to disrupt real estate transactions, but disruption and profitability are two very different things, and I'd love some clarity on the path to the latter. Here's what I'm wrestling with: IBuying is inherently a thin margin business, and you've been transparent about wanting to be a high-velocity market maker with tight spreads. I respect that vision. But the math only works if ancillary services — title, escrow, mortgage — carry real margin weight. As far as I can tell, that's always been the thesis for why the bundle matters. I've read your mortgage rate explanation, and I get the vision. You're doing to mortgage what E*TRADE did to stock trading and TurboTax did to taxes — eliminating the legacy cost structure through automation and AI, and passing those savings to buyers instead of pocketing them. That's a compelling consumer proposition! But here's my question as a shareholder: if IBuying runs on thin margins by design, and mortgage is structured to pass savings to consumers rather than generate margin for Opendoor, where does the meaningful margin actually come from? Title and escrow help at the edges, but I'm struggling to see what the high-margin wedge is in the long-term model. A few specific things I'd love management to address: 1. Is the thesis that Opendoor ultimately succeeds as a high-volume, single-digit gross margin business, and if so, what does the unit economics picture look like at scale? 2. Will mortgages be held on the balance sheet or sold? That changes the risk and return profile significantly. 3. Is there a future services layer — beyond title, escrow, and mortgage — that's intended to be a genuine profit center? I'm bullish on the team and the model, but I want to understand the explicit plan for how margin builds over time, not just how costs come down for consumers. Would appreciate hearing management's long-term margin architecture laid out plainly. I don't think I'm the only shareholder asking. Sincerely, $OPEN Shareholder

Opendoor is getting attention for offering mortgage rates that look "below market" and I want to talk about it. This isn't some magic trick. It's actually pretty basic. Here's how we do it: Opendoor mortgage rates aren't marked up. The end. See, when people talk about "market rates" for mortgages, they telling you about the rates they see online from their lender, or from Mortgage News Daily, or some other source. Remember: those rates include 350 basis points of markup on average, based on self-reported data to the Mortgage Bankers Association. 350 basis points is not nothing. As a rough rule of thumb, every 100 basis points markup raises a consumer's mortgage rate by 0.25 percentage points. So, let's all acknowledge that "market rates" in mortgage reflect 350 basis points of markup, which raises a customer's mortgage rate by roughly 0.875. Opendoor changed that. Our mortgage rates are what happens when you take that markup out. It's like what E*TRADE did for stocks. In the 1980s, the market price of a stock was whatever its price was plus whatever your broker charged. It's why every broker had a different price. Today, the price of a stock is the same everywhere. So if Opendoor's mortgage rates look "below market" to you, they're actually not. This is just the first time you're seeing mortgage rates without a massive markup. More here: opendoor.com/articles/why-m…