Opendoor’s Q1 numbers were mixed, but CEO Kaz Nejatian isn’t apologizing. Here’s what the company’s internal metrics say about whether the turnaround is real.
Opendoor Technologies on Thursday reported Q1 revenue of $720 million, topping the $664.5 million analyst consensus but down 38 percent year over year. EPS came in at a loss of $0.18, worse than the expected $0.10 loss. Shares edged up about 1 percent in after-hours trading.
CEO Kaz Nejatian, who took the helm last September, said the company has structurally shifted from making directional bets on home prices to a velocity-based model. New products include Opendoor Mortgage, now live in Colorado, and Cash Plus, which represents more than a third of acquisition contracts.
‘Market makers win by being right about time’
On the livestreamed earnings call, Nejatian framed Q1 as proof that the structural overhaul he’s been executing is working, even if the headline numbers don’t yet reflect it.
The core of his argument: Opendoor was previously running like a prop trading desk, making directional bets on home price appreciation months out. When those bets went wrong, spreads widened, acquisition quality deteriorated and the company spiraled. The new model, he said, is built around velocity instead of prediction.
“Market makers do not win by being right about direction,” Nejatian said on the call. “They win by being right about time.”
The shift, he said, shows up most clearly in cohort data.
Opendoor now tracks margin stability across each acquisition cohort. Under the old model, margins would bleed significantly as the company worked through inventory. Nejatian said the four most recent cohorts — October through January — have shown essentially flat margin curves, a pattern he called “a step function change.”
The CFO’s 3-number rebuttal
CFO Christie Exner pointed to three metrics she said tell the real story.
Resale contribution margin improved every month since September, closing Q1 at 4.4 percent, up 3.4 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. Homes sitting on the market for more than 120 days fell from 51 percent to 10 percent over the past three quarters. And signed acquisition contracts in Q1 topped 5,000, the company’s strongest quarter since Q2 2022.
“The last time acquisition contracts exceeded 5,000 in a quarter, our fixed OpEx was double where it is right now,” Exner said. “That’s the AI investments and operator empowerment that we talk about every single quarter.”
Nejatian names his failure conditions
Exner guided Q2 revenue to grow approximately 25 percent quarter-over-quarter and said the company expects to hit adjusted EBITDA break-even in Q2, plus or minus a few million.
More significantly, management said Opendoor is already adjusted EBITDA profitable on a 12-month go-forward basis as of April 1, and reiterated its goal of reaching adjusted net income profitability, also measured on a 12-month go-forward basis, by year-end.
Nejatian was blunt about what would signal the plan isn’t working: cohort curves reverting to the old bleed pattern, contract volume plateauing below the low end of the company’s guidance range and aged inventory creeping back up. “If all three of those things happen,” he said, “then we’re not doing what we said we would do.”
More than an iBuyer now
Much of the call centered on how AI is threading through Opendoor’s operations.
Executives described an AI audit tool that reconciles inspection scopes with actual repair decisions to improve operator compliance and cost discipline; field managers using AI-assisted scoping to trim pre-listing renovation spend by 10 to 20 percent in pilot markets; and a title intake process that went from up to five hours to 15 minutes.
The company also highlighted its Cash Plus product, which now represents more than a third of acquisition contracts, up from zero a year ago.
They also mentioned the launch of Opendoor Mortgage in Colorado, where Nejatian said early attach rates exceeded expectations and rates are running roughly 87 basis points below market averages.
On tokenization of real estate — asked about in a two-word question from the audience — Nejatian went long, calling on-chain settlement “the inevitable category end” for title and mortgage. He stopped short of announcing any products but said the company’s recent acquisition of Doma’s escrow division was “clearly the step in the right direction.”
Nejatian isn’t waiting for the macro to improve
With mortgage rates still elevated, analysts pressed on whether the profitability targets were realistic. But it was in his closing remarks that Nejatian was most direct: the tough market isn’t a headwind to be explained away — it’s the point.
Riffing on Warren Buffett’s famous line about finding out who’s swimming without shorts when the tide goes out, Nejatian said the housing downturn was exactly what he signed up for. “I didn’t take this job because I was hoping macro would turn, and it would bail us out,” he said. “I chose hard mode.”
Whether Opendoor’s turnaround holds as acquisition volumes scale will be the central question heading into the back half of 2026.
