CEO Kaz Nejatian says Opendoor has fixed its ‘fatal flaw’

It has been less than a year since Opendoor’s stock skyrocketed on the heels of a post made by hedge fund owner Eric Jackson on X, which ultimately led to the resignation of its CEO and Kaz Nejatian taking the helm. According to Nejatian, things at the iBuyer have vastly improved since he took over in September of 2025. 

“When it comes to contracts, this was our single best quarter since 2022,” Nejatian said during Opendoor’s Q1 2026 earnings call with investors and analysts last Thursday. “Cohorts are performing better, resale velocity is improving, and we’re scaling growth.”

According to Opendoor, its Q4 2025 and January 2026 acquisition cohorts “have the best combination of margin, margin stability and resale velocity of any corresponding cohort in company history (excluding the COVID-era),” and each of those four cohorts are “selling faster than any corresponding cohort since COVID.” Additionally, Opendoor claims that acquisition contracts have doubled quarter-over-quarter and are back to 2022 levels, while aged inventory has been cut from half of its inventory book to one-tenth of its total inventory. 

This ‘isn’t an accident or small scale luck,’ says Nejatian

During the firm’s last earnings call with investors and analysts, Nejatian highlighted the October 2025 homes purchased as an example of what Opendoor 2.0 was capable of doing. Although this was not Opendoor’s largest cohort of properties by volume, it was double the size of those a few months prior. Nejatian argues that by continuing this trend during the rest of Q4 and into Q1, it shows that October was not just luck, but rather a trend illustrating that Opendoor is on track to increase its acquisition size. 

“Four consecutive months tell us something October alone could not. This isn’t an accident. This isn’t small scale luck. Mortgage rates are still far too high and the listings are at all-time highs. But in a housing market that was supposed to break us, our cohorts are delivering,” Nejatian said. “October wasn’t a fluke. It was just the first month we could see it. We’ve now sold through over 80% of the October cohort and our trends have continued. Margins for our core cash products have come down only 90 basis points from where they were at 10% sold to over 80% sold. Last year, that same journey cost us over 260 basis points. So we’ve seen about a 3x improvement.”

Financial results don’t paint the same picture

Despite the improvements highlighted by Opendoor’s executives, the financial results aren’t painting the same picture. During the first quarter of 2026 Opendoor recorded $720 million in revenue, down $433 million from a year prior, while net loss jumped from $85 million in Q1 2026 to $173 million in Q1 2026. In addition, the number of homes sold during the quarter fell from 2,946 homes a year ago to 1,921 homes, while the number of homes purchased fell by 1,135 homes annually to 2,474 homes. But as executives highlighted, the number of homes in inventory at the end of the quarter was down 3,660 homes from a year ago to 3,420 homes. Executives also noted that Opendoor entered into contract on over 5,000 homes, twice as many as in Q4 2025 and three times as many as in Q3 2025. 

Even with the drop in revenue and increase in net loss, Nejatian remains positive about “Opendoor 2.0,” noting that its contribution margin has increased every single month since the firm bottomed out in September and October, November, December and January. 

In the past, Nejatian said Opendoor made “made directional bets” based on where the company assumed home prices would be going in the next few months. When the company got their predictions wrong, it did things like widen spreads and slow down acquisitions in order to stave off additional damage. 

“Every defensive move was the thing that was actually killing us. We were playing prevent defense when we were down by a touch down. So of course, we were losing. We widened the spread to protect ourselves, but in doing so, we changed their funnel,” Nejatian said. “We changed the thing that was making the company work. We got worse homes. Worse homes meant worse margins. Worse margins went back into the model. The system got more conservative and spreads widened even more. We didn’t just have a risk that we could not calculate. We actually built a machine that amplifies it. Every move made everything worse. That was our fatal flaw.”

Old model caused company to slow down

According to Nejatian, this “old model” caused the entire company to slow down. In order to change things, he said the company didn’t just improve the pricing model, but it changed the question the pricing model was meant to answer. 

“A year ago, the most important input into every decision was our home price appreciation forecast. Today, it’s how fast we can sell the home we’re looking to buy. Market makers do not win by being right about direction. They win by controlling their exposure to being wrong. They win by being right about time,” he said. 

Some of the timeline improvements, according to Nejatian, are due to a series of products the firm launched during the quarter, including the acquisition of title firm Doma’s escrow division, a rebuilt offer page for sellers, a portable assessment schedule for sellers that allows them to get their home assessment done when they want, the launch of Opendoor Mortgage in Colorado and the tripling of the Cash Now, More Later product. 

As Nejatian and his team look to achieve adjusted net income profitability on a 12-month go-forward basis by the end of the year, he is remaining positive about what the future holds for Opendoor. 

“When I joined Opendoor, I did it because homeownership matters,” he said. “It is the single thing that leads to better families, better neighborhoods. When people buy a home they love, they’re buying a share in this country. We don’t buy homes at Opendoor to hold them. We buy them so we can get them into the next family faster, with less friction at a better price. And every family we help move is a family that puts down roots. It’s a neighborhood, we’re getting better. It’s children that get to grow up in a home that their parents love. Faster is what this company was built to do.”