- Opendoor’s push in home acquisitions, right-sizing the organization and the mortgage business make the case for faster-than-expected turnaround at the company, says Eric Jackson.
- Jackson praised CEO Kaz Najatian’s 4.99% mortgage rate product, citing the executive’s success in building Shop Pay Installments.
- Opendoor stock is down about 50% from its peak last September.
Hedge fund manager Eric Jackson, whose bullish bet and commentary on Opendoor Technologies sparked a “meme stock” rally in the online real estate company’s shares last year, is back with a fresh optimistic thesis aimed at reviving what has now clearly become a sluggish stock.
Jackson believes his $82 stock forecast at the time “may have been too conservative,” saying that Opendoor’s push in accelerating home acquisitions, right-sizing the organization, and building the mortgage business under new CEO Kaz Nejatian makes the case for a faster-than-expected turnaround at the company.
OPEN’s stock is more than 50% below its peak in September, and Jackson’s “conservative” estimate implies a more than sixteen-fold surge from the last close.
Jackson’s Opendoor Thesis
Opendoor's weekly acquisitions have increased from roughly 131 homes to 442, Jackson said in an X post late Sunday. He said the company headcount is down 40%, and Wall Street wasn’t modelling the operating leverage from those cuts and from further cuts that may come.
Lastly, Opendoor’s mortgage business – bolstered by its acquisition of HomeBuyer.com and the recent launch of a product offering a 4.99% mortgage rate – could be a game-changer, Jackson argued, dismissing skepticism against subsidized mortgages.
“Kaz heard the same thing at Shopify when he built Shop Pay Installments from zero to one of the largest installment products on the internet in a year,” he said, adding that he believes Opendoor’s adjacent products, like insurance and other services related to home ownership, would come to be major moats in the future. Before taking over as Opendoor’s CEO last September, Nejatian served as Shopify's chief operating officer.
"The old debate was whether iBuying works," Jackson said, referring to Opendoor's model in which sellers submit home details online and receive a cash offer, typically within 24 hours. And instead of a traditional commission, Opendoor charges a service fee to cover repairs, holding costs and transaction risk.
"The better question now is whether Opendoor is quietly becoming a housing-fintech platform. That's a very different multiple," Jackson said. "My original $82 target used Bloomberg's FY2028 revenue consensus. Wall Street currently has $4.2 billion for FY2026, but the acquisition pace implies nearly double that. If the pace is real — and if Kaz's Shopify playbook translates faster than expected — that timeline may be pulling forward. That's what I'm watching now."
Retail Pulls Back From Opendoor
Although Nejatian has accelerated on several fronts, retail traders are unimpressed and appear to be tuning out as the stock has slid about 50% from its peak in September.
Stocktwits sentiment for OPEN has mostly been ‘bearish’ over the past three months, barring spikes in mid-January and late-February, including one instance when Lennar Corp disclosed a major stake in the company. Message volume has declined 87% over the past 30 days and at a similar rate over the past three months, signaling a pullback in retail activity in the stock.
Year-to-date, Opendoor shares are down 14.2%, compared to the 1.5% decline in the benchmark S&P 500 index. OPEN stock had a ‘neutral’ sentiment on Stocktwits late Sunday.
For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.