Opendoor launches in Tucson, expands Arizona footprint

The Tucson housing market is on fire as we enter the heart of the sizzling summer months and Opendoor is adding to the heat. That’s right, Opendoor is now officially live in the Old Pueblo!

Opendoor has deep roots in Arizona. We launched in 2014 just up I-10 in Phoenix and are excited to extend our footprint into Tucson! To learn more about our plans to make buying and selling homes simple and stress-free for local residents, we chatted with Opendoor West Division General Manager, Amit Arora.

Q. Why is Opendoor a great fit for Tucson?

A. Opendoor co-founder and CEO, Eric Wu, purchased his first home while attending the University of Arizona in Tucson back in 2002. To an extent, the roots of Opendoor are here in Tucson!

The metropolitan area is home to a diverse and quickly growing population of homeowners — from first home buyers, to growing families, to retirees looking to downsize. With a median sales price of $232,000 as of June 2019, Tucson continues to be an affordable and attractive place for homeownership no matter what stage of life you’re in. We can’t wait to bring ease and convenience to the moving process for local homeowners.

Q. What was the most surprising thing you noticed when joining Opendoor?

A. I joined Opendoor over three years ago and from the beginning, I was struck by how customer centric the culture is. We’ve always been laser focused on transparency and improving the experience to make the real estate transaction as seamless as possible. It’s our guiding principle and helps us when we are making decisions about how to make it even easier for customers to buy, sell, or trade-in homes with Opendoor.

A good example of this is our 30-day buy back guarantee, through which you can return your home to Opendoor within 30 days if you’re unhappy with it for any reason. This is virtually unheard of in the real estate industry.

Q. What is your favorite customer story?

A. We recently worked with a Tucson customer who had considered moving for a while, but was disappointed with the offers he received when trying to sell through the traditional route a few years ago. In addition, with children and pets, it was a herculean effort keeping the home in show ready condition for multiple months.

Flash forward to 2019, after hearing about Opendoor, he requested an offer online, received it while having breakfast with his wife one morning, and after a few minutes discussion, they decided to go for it. He appreciated that the Opendoor offer was in line with the price of comparable homes in his neighborhood and we were able to help him and his family move on to the next chapter of their lives.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge you’re looking forward to solving over the next 6-12 months?

A. I’m excited to bring Opendoor to more and more markets throughout the country. Launching a new market like Tucson takes tremendous collaboration across a variety of different teams, so it’s a fun challenge to work on. We’re in 20 markets today and have ambitions to empower everyone with the freedom to move, which means we have a lot of work to do!

Q: What’s your favorite part of working at Opendoor?

A. I love that Opendoor is both a real estate and a technology company, not just one or the other. You can see it at every stage of our product development process. We combine local real estate insights in each of the 20 markets we operate in with a world class technology team, delivering a seamless experience to our customers as a result. I haven’t seen many companies do this the way we do.

Q. What is your superpower?

A. My superpower is being a great coach for my team members. One of my favorite parts of being a Division General Manager is empowering the leaders working for me to run high performing teams and grow as leaders themselves. As a General Manager, you’re only as good as the team around you, so being a great coach really helps me succeed.

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