Real Estate Shows Tech Is No Holy Grail
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Real Estate Shows Tech Is No Holy Grail

In iBuying, just because you bet on technology, it doesn’t mean you’re a winner.

By Laura Forman
Mon, Jul 5, 2021 10:57amGrey Clock 3 min

Everyone wants to be a tech company. Office-sharing, meat substitution, ride-hailing, fashion styling, fitness—they are all technology businesses, according to founders who covet the high-flying valuations the appellation can garner in the public markets.

But just having technology doesn’t automatically make an investment superior. Consider real estate’s digital home flipping: Here is a business that is undoubtedly “tech” but where the value of the technology isn’t yet clear. With iBuyer Offerpad’s merger with blank-check firm Supernova Partners expected to close early this quarter, the value of technology—or lack thereof—is something that online real-estate investors will want to consider as they place their bets in a crowded field.

So-called “pure play” iBuyers Offerpad and competitor Opendoor Technologies both describe themselves as technology companies. Opendoor says it is a “digital platform for residential real estate.” Offerpad says it is focused on “tech-enabled real estate solutions.” Both companies have a chief technology officer and some version of a data scientist, presumably there to hone the technology investments and analyze their utility.

These companies may be solving similar pain points in seamlessly digitizing real-estate transactions, but they seem to be approaching the problem in different ways—Opendoor with money and Offerpad with experience. As of its March presentation, Offerpad said it had raised less than 9% of what SoftBank-fueled Opendoor had, though it had bought and subsequently sold 38% as many homes. And whereas Offerpad is led by a former real-estate agent, Opendoor is led by someone from the real estate technology business.

Opendoor’s deep pockets have no doubt fueled its rapid growth. It is now active in 39 markets with the stated goal of entering 42 by year-end—double the number of markets Offerpad is targeting this year, despite being only one year younger. But bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better: Opendoor lost far more money last year.

According to company presentations and regulatory filings, both companies had roughly the same gross margins last year, suggesting they are equally good at pricing homes and timing the market. An analysis by scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder Mike DelPrete shows the difference in economics lies in “indirect costs” such as technology, the sales and marketing of that technology and the salaries of the people who build it.

Mr. DelPrete’s analysis shows Opendoor sold a little more than twice as many homes as Offerpad last year, but its technology and development expenses were about eight times higher over that period. A look at regulatory filings from both companies shows that dynamic was also true at least in the two years before the pandemic, albeit at a slightly lower ratio. The takeaway: Either Opendoor’s technology isn’t all that it is cracked up to be, or its investments have yet to pay off.

Opendoor says it isn’t blindly pursuing growth for growth’s sake, but making strategic investments in pricing, technology and operations platforms as it scales. The goal, according to the company, is to build a platform capable of high volume. With the real-estate market on fire, it is certainly working that angle: Opendoor’s spent almost as much on technology and development in the first quarter as it did in all of 2019.

The business of iBuying is still nascent: Opendoor says just 1% of real-estate transactions today occur online and iBuyers claim that they are competing against the traditional agent model of buying and selling rather than one another. But the slice of the market open to iBuyers has become crowded, creating a land grab atmosphere. Especially, as the pandemic has shown a generation of tech-savvy millennials finally seem to be hitting the home-buying market, time is of the essence.

Offerpad’s SPAC deal reportedly gave the company a post-transaction value of $3 billion, well below Opendoor’s current fully diluted market value of $11 billion. When comparing the two, investors should at least consider the fact that technology is only as valuable as its competitive advantage.

Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: July 4, 2021.



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Ray White’s chief economist outlines her predictions for housing market trends in 2024

By Bronwyn Allen
Tue, Nov 28, 2023 2 min

Ray White’s chief economist, Nerida Conisbee says property price growth will continue next year and mortgage holders will need to “survive until 2025” amid expectations of higher interest rates for longer.

Ms Conisbee said strong population growth and a housing supply shortage combatted the impact of rising interest rates in 2023, leading to unusually strong price growth during a rate hiking cycle. The latest CoreLogic data shows home values have increased by more than 10 percent in the year to date in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Among the regional markets, price growth has been strongest in regional South Australia with 8.6 percent growth and regional Queensland at 6.9 percent growth.

“As interest rates head close to peak, it is expected that price growth will continue. At this point, housing supply remains extremely low and many people that would be new home buyers are being pushed into the established market,” Ms Conisbee said. “Big jumps in rents are pushing more first home buyers into the market and population growth is continuing to be strong.”

Ms Conisbee said interest rates will be higher for longer due to sticky inflation. “… we are unlikely to see a rate cut until late 2024 or early 2025. This means mortgage holders need to survive until 2025, paying far more on their home loans than they did two years ago.”

Buyers in coastal areas currently have a window of opportunity to take advantage of softer prices, Ms Conisbee said. “Look out for beach house bargains over summer but you need to move quick. In many beachside holiday destinations, we saw a sharp rise in properties for sale and a corresponding fall in prices. This was driven by many pandemic driven holiday home purchases coming back on to the market.”

3 key housing market trends for 2024

Here are three of Ms Conisbee’s predictions for the key housing market trends of 2024.

Luxury apartment market to soar

Ms Conisbee said the types of apartments being built have changed dramatically amid more people choosing to live in apartments longer-term and Australia’s ageing population downsizing. “Demand is increasing for much larger, higher quality, more expensive developments. This has resulted in the most expensive apartments in Australia seeing price increases more than double those of an average priced apartment. This year, fewer apartments being built, growing population and a desire to live in some of Australia’s most sought-after inner urban areas will lead to a boom in luxury apartment demand.”

Homes to become even greener

The rising costs of energy and the health impacts of heat are two new factors driving interest in green homes, Ms Conisbee said. “Having a greener home utilising solar and batteries makes it cheaper to run air conditioning, heaters and pool pumps. We are heading into a particularly hot summer and having homes that are difficult to cool down makes them far more dangerous for the elderly and very young.”

More people living alone

For some time now, long-term social changes such as delayed marriage and an ageing population have led to more people living alone. However, Ms Conisbee points out that the pandemic also showed that many people prefer to live alone for lifestyle reasons. “Shorter term, the pandemic has shown that given the chance, many people prefer to live alone with a record increase in single-person households during the time. This trend may influence housing preferences, with a potential rise in demand for smaller dwellings and properties catering to individuals rather than traditional family units.”

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