Instant buying or iBuying is starting to shake up certain real estate markets in the U.S. as firms like Zillow, Opendoor, OfferPad and RedFin offer the service to help people more efficiently sell their homes; most of these firms have only started rolling their programs out, Opendoor is the biggest so far with more than 11,000 homes bought last year alone; there are a few issues with the program, it is not a big money maker but instead serves as a lead generation tool for other lending products and what happens when there is a protracted slow down in the market; when rates were rising late last year some of the companies had to sell homes at losses, the market rebounded quickly and there was not much damage done; the programs have been most successful in markets with cookie cutter type housing where pricing is easier to gauge; real estate is still one of the least digital transactions in finance, a shift is coming to help change this largely paper based market. Source.
