Compare Opendoor and Nobul

For Sellers

Cash Offers
15%-20%
Home Equity
Opendoor does not provide real estate listing representation. Instead, the company buys homes directly, repairs and resells them to consumers or companies that rent them to tenants. Opendoor makes an offer equal to 80%-85% of home value accounting for fees and any cost of the repairs and resale.

For Sellers

Referred Agents
0.2%
Home Sale Price
Nobul does not provide real estate services to home sellers. Instead, this company matches consumers with various real estate agents in exchange for a referral fee. Nobul results suffer from pay-to-play bias because the network does not match consumers with agents unwilling to pay a significant part of their commission to Nobul.

For Buyers

Not Applicable
0
No Rates
Opendoor does not provide real estate services to home buyers. Opendoor does resell some of the homes it buys on the open market, just like any other real estate investor aiming for the highest return on investment.

For Buyers

Referred Agents
0.2%
Home Sale Price
Nobul does not provide real estate services to home buyers. Instead, this company matches consumers with various real estate agents in exchange for a referral fee. Nobul results suffer from pay-to-play bias because the network does not match consumers with agents unwilling to pay a significant part of their commission to Nobul.
Question: What is the difference between Opendoor and Nobul?
Answer: Opendoor is a direct home cash buyer that buys select homes off-market with cash offers and resells them at a profit to homebuyers while Nobul is a referral fee network that enables broker-to-broker collusion with use of blanket referral agreements
Compare Opendoor and Nobul for home buying and selling. HomeOpenly is an impartial and an open resource focused on trending real estate services, portals and start-ups.

First published: 05 April 2019
Last updated: 25 April 2021

Buying and Selling with Opendoor

Opendoor is a multi-state VC-backed real estate investor that operates across highly specific locations. Where available Opendoor mainly focuses on homogenous homes built after 1960 with a value between $125,000 and $500,000.

In determining the offer, Opendoor discounts from the estimated retail value after home is fully renovated.

Opendoor Pricing

Opendoor makes money with a difference between buying and selling each home. This difference is a combination of fees and home value appreciation between what Opendoor buys and seller each home for. Sellers can expect to receive 80%-85% of their home value from this type of sale after any fees, cost of the minor repairs, and resale.

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

Opendoor Editor's Review:

Opendoor will buy a home at a price that is below market value due to necessary repairs, renovation, and other factors. After Opendoor buys the home, it renovates and resells it for a profit to other buyers or companies that rent homes to qualified tenants. With low offer price, comes a convenience of an all-cash closing when selling a home. Opendoor claims to provide convenience, speed, and certainty of a fast sale. Dubbed as an iBuyer, Opendoor makes an offer on a house within days or hours, but this offer is highly conditional. Each offer Opendoor makes is just an estimate until it makes a home inspection.

At the inspection, Opendoor will often find reasons to lower its original offer when it finds items that need repair or if it has made a mistake in its original valuation. When the company is unable to make an offer, it simply redirects consumers to a random real estate agent in exchange for an undisclosed referral fee. Opendoor offers fast home sales, but these are typically accompanied by higher fees (starting at 6% and rising to 12% for more risky properties.)

Opendoor only makes offers to select homes in select regions. Opendoor claims that it provides market offers, but we find this not be true. Search for past Opendoor transactions makes it clear that company also makes money with home appreciation difference (typical appreciation of 5.5% to 12.5%) between what it buys houses for and what it sells them for in addition to service fees. The main disadvantage of using Opendoor is high losses in homeowners' equity.

Opendoor is a "heavy" model, backed by a large amount of VC capital ready to buy homes in all-cash transactions. As any real estate investor, Opendoor is susceptible to losing money in any given transaction. This model is susceptible to a number of risk factors, high operational costs and a continued need for higher-than-average Return on Investment (ROI) with each flip. Opendoor is not legally bound to represent consumers, its main legal obligation is to its shareholders.

Opendoor's fast transaction and easy move-out experience typically come at an extremely high price because this model incurs "double" transaction costs during the purchase, holding period, rehab work and final sale that includes real estate agent fees. Opendoor pays real estate agent commissions like any other buyer and seller of real estate, so these costs must be accounted for in the company's fee structure. The facts continue to point against Opendoor’s claims that it offers fair value for the houses it buys.

Moreover, because most homes in the United States are financed, homeowners own only partial net equity in their home. Banks receive the same amount of the remaining mortgage sum regardless of how any given home is sold, whereas only homeowners' net equity is lost in transaction fees paid to Opendoor.

Typically Opendoor uses the following factors when determining the offer: existing condition of the home including repairs needed, time it will take to finish needed repairs, value of a home compared to other comparable homes in the area, real estate commission required to resell, costs associated with maintaining a home during repairs, including taxes, payments, insurance, utilities and homeowner dues.

Today, there are a number of highly qualified real estate agents who offer competitive listing rates and flat fee listings across the United States. Unless a situation absolutely requires a quick sale, HomeOpenly recommends that consumers first consider using a licensed real estate agent working on competitive terms to properly list their homes on the open market before turning to Opendoor option.

Some real estate agents are now offering Concierge services that include painting, landscaping, and other services that help consumers place their home on the open market without upfront costs and high loss to home equity.

Conflicting Incentives for Consumers

Opendoor, when it acts as a real estate investor, further offers 1% of the purchase price back at closing to work with an Opendoor Home Advisor to buy an Opendoor home. According to the company, Opendoor must not be obligated to pay any buyer's agent commissions for this promotion to apply. Having to require such terms limits consumer's ability to use an independent buyer's agent in a transaction. In effect, Opendoor offers a buyer an incentive to forgo independent representation in exchange for a 1% discount. Consumers should never be financially incentivized by a real estate investor to limit their representation when buying real estate from them.

In contradiction to this incentive, Opendoor Terms of Service directly state that: "in making you an Opendoor Offer, Opendoor is not acting as your real estate agent or broker. Opendoor is merely acting as, or on behalf of, a purchaser of real estate. As a seller, you have the right, and it is your responsibility, to independently evaluate and decide whether to accept the Opendoor Offer."

Company further states: "Buyer represents that she has had ample opportunity to obtain legal and other professional counsel of its choosing and that it is relying solely on its own independent judgment and that of its own professional consultants, if any, in entering into the purchase contract and purchasing the property."

From one side, Opendoor offers consumers an incentive in an exchange for "not being obligated to pay any buyer's agent commissions," but from another, requires buyers to "represent that they have had an ample opportunity to obtain legal and other professional counsel." These two propositions contradict each other.

Conflicting Incentives for Listing Agents

Further, Opendoor improperly offers financial incentives to listing agents to help convince consumers to take lower-priced offers from the company, instead of listing homes on the open market. iBuyer offers, accounting for fees and reduced market value, are systematically the most expensive way to transfer ownership.

In this scheme, a listing agent is offered a financial incentive from Opendoor to bring their client to the company for a pre-market offer. No real estate investor (iBuyer) should be able to offer any financial incentive to a third-party representative to persuade consumers to accept their low offers. By offering a fixed financial incentive (currently set as 1% fee of the whole transaction) to listing agents upon acceptance of an Opendoor offer, the company acts to create a conflict of interest between a listing agent and their (present, or potential) client.

A listing agent, in this case, has to choose between having to properly represent a consumer to sell thier home in the open market subject to a competitively negotiated commission, or getting a quick pre-fixed "incentive cash" for handing them off to Opendoor.

Opendoor can change this incentive amount at any time. Today, the company offers 1% incentive of the entire home sale to the listing agent, tomorrow, the company decides to set this incentive at 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% or some other pre-fixed amount, as it likes.

Such incentives are a form of price-fixing and directly affect listing agents' ability to work with their clients on fair terms. Further, these incentives remove listing agents' and consumers' abilities to negotiate home sale representation fees (listing commissions) in a competitive setting.

Opendoor Brokerage

Opendoor is a parent company of Opendoor Brokerage, but they are two distinctly different legal propositions. Opendoor is a real estate investor (iBuyer) and Opendoor Brokerage is a licensed real estate broker. For this reason, HomeOpenly maintains two separate reviews for these entities. All user reviews and the editor's review for Opendoor Brokerage are located here.

Where does Opendoor operate?

Opendoor currently operates in select areas across Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham, San Antonio, Charlotte, Nashville, Tampa, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Houston, Sacramento, Riverside, Denver, Portland, and Austin..

Buying and Selling with Nobul

WARNING: Unlawful Kickbacks, Broker-to-Broker Collusion, False Marketing, Wire Fraud, Price Fixing.

Nobul is a broker-to-broker collusion scheme, where "partner agents" unlawfully agree to pay massive kickbacks to receive your information and engage in market allocation, consumer allocation, false advertising, unlawful kickbacks, wire fraud, and price-fixing practices in violation of, inter alia, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, 15 U.S.C. § 1, 15 U.S.C. § 45, 12 U.S.C. § 2607, 12 C.F.R. § 1024.14. As a consumer, you will always significantly overpay for Realtor commissions subject to hidden kickbacks and pay-to-play steering promoted in this scheme.

United States federal antitrust laws prohibit consumer allocation and blanket referral agreements between real estate companies.

Be smart; do not allow your information to be "sold as a lead" to a double-dealing Realtor in exchange for massive commission kickbacks paid from your future home sale, or your future home purchase.


Nobul works as a referral fee network that collects pricing and services data from a limited pool of Referred Agents and sends it to consumers as non-binding proposals. Nobul operates as a licensed real estate brokerage in Canada, but it does not produce any services that are typically offered by real estate agents and does not represent consumers when buying or selling real estate in any State.

Nobul is also registered as a broker in Florida under license number CQ1056639 so that it is able to collect referral fees in the United States. When consumers submit information to Nobul, this information is simply sold to real estate agents who are willing to pay for it with a share of their commission. If an Agent does not want to pay a referral fee, the consumer will not see any proposals from them using the Nobul platform.

Nobul claims to provide savings, but consumers are likely to overpay for their Referred Agent's commission due to added mandatory platform fee.

Nobul Pricing

Nobul revenue comes from referral fees and sale of user data.

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

Nobul Editor's Review:

Nobul is a referral fee network in business to collect fees for matching brokers with consumers. Referral fees are highly disadvantageous for real estate consumers because they must be accounted for with excessive real estate commissions. Nobul Service Terms state that: “In consideration of Nobul's Referrals pursuant to this Agreement, the Agent shall pay to Nobul, a referral fee (a “Referral Fee”) based on a percentage of revenue equal to 0.2% of the purchase price of the property purchased or sold. The Agent shall pay the Referral Fee to Nobul within ten (10) days following the closing date of the purchase or sale of the property.

One of the major expenses for real estate consumers, when buying or selling a home, is real estate service fees and closing costs associated with the purchase, or sale. Service fees and closing costs are, for the most part, a necessary expense. Real estate agents significantly help home buyers and sellers to navigate a complicated and competitive real estate process in exchange for a legitimate commission as a reward.

Other closing fees usually include required services such as property appraisals, inspections, title insurance, etc. – all in some way help to legitimize the sale and to manage risk. There can be much said with regards to managing closing costs by choosing a motivated competitive agent who is willing to offer a buyer’s refund or a competitive listing rate.

On the other hand, while claiming it saves money to consumers, Nobul simply adds referral fees into already a fee-ridden process – consumers experience false and fabricated savings in this model. In economics, this process is known as reverse competition, where consumers end up being "sold as leads" to Referred Agents.

The platform works with a limited pool of Referral Agents willing to pay a significant part of their commission to Nobul. This referral fee is back-loaded into Referred Agent's agreement, instead of being handed to the consumer directly. The consumer technically does not pay Nobul, but she ends up with a higher cost of commissions when working with their Referred Agent. Nobul is not a free platform, these fees are simply hidden inside the commission.

Let's say a real estate consumer, James, wants to hire a listing agent when selling a median-priced home for $250,000. A local competitive agent, Jill, offers James a 1.5% commission while helping him in this process. The estimated commission, in this case, is $3,750.

On the other hand, James also receives non-binding proposals using Nobul platform from Referred Agents with a referral fee attached to the back of every proposal. When James is faced with these types of proposals, results are quite different. Firmly assuming that the profit margins and service offerings remain the same for Jill and Referral Agents using Nobul, any possible buyer's refund offered by Referral Agents must be reduced to account for the Nobul referral fees.

The referral fee in this scenario estimated at $500 due to Nobul from a Referral Agent. With the profit margin fixed, the estimated commission Referral Agent may offer to James is now up by $500 set at $4,250. James just effectively paid Nobul $500 for a "service" that is supposed to be "free."

These fees significantly increase with the price of a home and damage quality of service the agent is willing to provide. One reason the amount of savings may ever be matched by Referred Agents versus Jill's competitive savings is due to broker-to-broker pricing collusion - if Referral Agent is willing to reduce their fee beyond market rates to compensate Nobul out of their own pocket, which is highly unlikely and unreasonable to assume. Because referral fees are pre-set between Nobul and Referral Agents in advance, the cost of the referral is easily incorporated with the excessive commission.

The reason we give Nobul a low score is due to exigent fees and the way these fees are structured. Nobul operates a Referral Network that commoditizes consumers as leads. With Nobul agents are forced to quote higher commissions due to added fees. The vast majority of competitive agents refuse to play this game and Nobul simply steers consumers toward a very limited pool of agents in its pay-to-play network.

As a licensed real estate agent that doesn't perform any real estate services, or takes any responsibility for the transaction, it's not entirely clear how this process works under the Business and Professions Code.

Should real estate agents distribute "bids" of other agents for a fee? If one to say that the referral fee is indeed necessary, why not structure it as an actual service fee that is properly charged, instead of having to be back-loaded into Referral Agent's agreement?

The answer is simple – if Nobul was to charge Agents for its service directly, no Agent would ever sign-up. Agents only sign-up with Nobul because the price of the referral fee can be easily incorporated into their client's agreement.

Nobul further violates the privacy of consumers because it requires Referred Agents to disclose major details about the actual home purchase or sale. Nobul states that: "The Agent shall maintain adequate records of all fees and commissions received from the Client and shall make such records available to Nobul at its request. Such records shall include copies of the applicable real estate association’s Listing Agreement, Agreement of Purchase and Sale, a statement of commission earnings and the Trade Record Sheet, as applicable."

Despite collecting the referral fee, Nobul takes absolutely no responsibility for the transaction and consumers to acknowledge and agree "that no employment, joint venture, partnership, or agency relationship exists between you and Nobul as a result of this Agreement or your use of our Services. We are solely independent contractors."

Nobul clearly doesn't provide any tangible value to the real estate consumers as a licensed real estate agent. Nobul further audits all transactions because it needs to find out how much money real estate agents receive in commissions, inevitably collecting private details of consumer’s agreement for home purchase or sale.

This effect is known as a “blind” match. Truly competitive agents who offer great savings to consumers can never use Nobul. For example, a highly competitive flat fee listing service has a set competitive price – they would never be able to pay an excessive fee amount to a third-party.

Nobul referral fee only works is with services who are silent on their commission – if a client comes directly to an agent, one price is given, if a client uses Nobul, another price is in play. We strongly believe that real estate consumers looking to buy or sell a home should always use 0% referral fee platforms in order to avoid paying a higher cost in commissions.

By using Nobul, consumers further encourage pay-to-play bias in a broken real estate industry.

Where does Nobul operate?

Nobul currently operates in select areas across Canada, Florida.