Sam, a 46-year-old systems administrator at a reputed company, got the opportunity to transfer from Phoenix to Austin. The family put their home on the market at a price of $335,000. Even after 3 months, they couldn’t get any offer from the potential buyers. Even after the realtor’s assurance and cutting down the price they were unable to sell their home. However, they decided to try one year later by going to Opendoor this time.

» Idea of Opendoor

There are many investors are putting another large bet on a startup expecting to reinvent a decades-old method into something that’s near-instant. This time emptying $325 million into Opendoor which is a company that wants to bring the complex process of buying or selling a home to the process as simple as booking a cab.

Opendoor is one not so different from a customer theory that’s bloomed into businesses worth tens of billions of dollars. Consumers dislike complicated processes and are ready to hand off those processes to technology companies to make those processes simple.

» Working of Opendoor

Opendoor is a San Francisco-based startup. It helps people to buy homes for cash based on a black-box pricing algorithm. The company bets that there are hundreds and thousands of people who value the certainty of a sale over getting a very high price. Opendoor makes money by charging a service fee of 6%. This process is similar to how the standard real estate commission works. They also charge an additional fee that varies with its assessment of the riskiness of the transaction and brings the total charge to an average of 8%.

The company then makes fixes approved by inspectors and attempts to sell the homes for a small incentive. The company allows buyers to shop on their own timetable. They can use the key codes for entree into the properties. They also get a 30-day guarantee that Opendoor will buy it back if they’re not happy. Opendoor also provides a two-year warranty on the electrical system and major appliances.

Eric Wu, the co-founder, and chief executive of Opendoor is obsessed with the pain points of moving.

Sam and his wife filled out the online questionnaire of Opendoor. And this time, within a few days, their house was sold at $334,000.

Sam’s wife Julia was pleasantly surprised at the offer. They closed on the deal and after that, they soon were able to purchase a new home at Austin.

Recent Fundings of the Opendoor app

From a very long time, there are small often less-than-reputable outfits that buy distressed homes for cash. Wall Street firms, prominently Blackstone, have been opportunistic purchasers of residential real estate. Opendoor, however, is making another bet. Wu thinks Opendoor can buy and sell homes, in abundance, by exercising the type of data analysis that has been crucial to many Silicon Valley companies. At the same time, he is targeting the broad middle of the market. Opendoor deals in single-family homes built after 1960. The homes are usually priced between $125,000 and $500,000. The company has no concern in distressed properties, which require too much work, or in luxury properties, which are more difficult to value.

Buying up residences to make a market is capital-intensive and also has great risks. Opendoor has generated $110 million in assets from Khosla Ventures, GGV Capital and Access Industries. The company earned a valuation of $580 million in the year 2016.

Opendoor has also raised more than $400 million in debt to purchase the homes. The company has to price the homes that they have bought accurately in order to succeed. They even have to sell them quickly to minimize the costs of carrying them. As interest rates increases or housing values fall, the company has to figure out how to respond. The company may charge a higher fee when the market risk increases. This is its own version of surge pricing.

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist who is not associated with Opendoor, thinks that people will be prepared to sell their homes for less in return for the lessened hassle and more specific timing. This is very ideal and especially true during times when home sales slow. He thinks the less liquid and slow the market is, the more people who are selling are expected to value this process.

Buying and selling of homes can be one of the more severe ones as it requires a lot of shifting pieces and organizing multiple time tables and schedules. Opendoor’s approach is that it can produce a sizable business by cutting that time and energy cost to zero. They can efficiently build a new technology-powered business model in the process, just like Uber or Airbnb.

Develop Alternative app of Opendoor, How to Make an App Like Opendoor, Opendoor alternative app features to consider

Scope of building Opendoor clone app and the Expansion of Opendoor

Opendoor thinks and hopes to grow to 50 markets by the end of the year 2020 with this extra financing. Currently, Opendoor is thriving in 10 markets., The company also claims that it now buys more than $2.5 billion in homes on an annual run rate.

The company has raised a $325 million funding round co-led by General Atlantic, Access Technology Ventures and Lennar Corporation. Andreessen Horowitz, 10100 Fund, Coatue Management, and Invitation Homes were also a part of the round, along with the existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Lakestar, GGV Capital, NEA and Khosla Ventures.

Opendoor has raised a total of $645 million in equity and $1.5 billion in debt.

According to CEO Eric Wu, there’s a lot of tailwinds with people wanting to transact with their mobile device. The same scenario can be seen with Uber, Lyft and Amazon. The CEO thinks that the future of real estate will be on-demand. This is what Opendoor keeps as its centerpiece. They are making the transaction real-time and instant. Opendoor is no doubt transforming the face of the real estate industry.

Features of Opendoor app that you can add to your own real estate app

» Provide Hundreds of Housing Listings for buying and Selling

Adding this feature in your real-estate app is a must. You must provide your user with thousand of options to explore and choose from. In the case of a buyer, they must get enough choices to explore and for sellers, it is important to get them a great offer. If you are thinking to build real estate apps like Opendoor, then presenting features that assist users to find a right house as per their requirement is what makes your app desirable.

» Present Adjustable Search Options

Users always prefer flexibility. In case of the search options also, the users need filter by bath, bed, or price to check only those houses which match their criteria. Opendoor homes for sale are easy to explore with a map or list view. You can allow your users to save and review a listing later.

» Immediately seek the Home Experts

While developing real estate apps like Opendoor, you need to incorporate the feature in which users can spontaneously connect with home experts for any of their doubts, queries, and confusions.

The home experts can also assist the users with information about their favorite listings and deal with any problems that occur while finding the right house.

You can also include directions to let your users know if there are any open houses for sale in the close locality.

You should also add features like allowing the buyers to check out high-resolution photographs and at-a-glance property details of every home. You can also let the users have instant updates regarding the properties, cost changes and notifications.

All in all, you should build an app that can provide your users with a seamless experience. And we are here to help you out with the same.

Connect with us to know more regarding the features and cost of development of an on-demand real estate app like Opendoor.

Note: We do not make clones of any exact application, clone means to us is how better we can execute your app idea with existing app features and experience.

The post Build an app like Opendoor or Opendoor clone app to change the way of buying and selling homes + How to Make an App Like Opendoor + Create an App like Opendoor + Apps Like Opendoor + Develop Alternative of Opendoor appeared first on Coruscate Solutions.

In this blog, we are going to discuss everything about the Zillow app, including recent news which says that Zillow has made more than 40% of its revenue by flip-housing. We will also discuss things you should consider while going for real estate app development and the cost of it.

The Growing Need For Real Estate Apps Among House Hunters

Finding a new home in a new location has always been a struggle. It includes some tedious tasks such as finding broker online and end up paying a huge commission or requesting your friends to find you a new place. Even after this much of struggle, you turn up with nothing that suits your needs or meets your bare minimum requirements.
Here apps like Zillow and Trulia come to aid. They help people who want to rent out or sell residential or commercial properties and want to find a potential buyer or renter quickly. These apps are equipped with many groundbreaking features. For instance, it enables users to find the perfect property by applying different filters.

In recent time, our research team has witnessed many profitable opportunities in the real estate industry. Following graph clearly depicts that how rapidly the real estate tech industry has evolved in recent years. Thanks to this rapid expansion, many entrepreneurs have jumped in the market with robust apps. Zillow is one of them.

Get insight into Zillow – Real Estate & Rental App

Before we move into the other aspects of the real estate app, and how you need to work through one, here are a few points about the Zillow app that make it unique and distinctive.

The app has one feature specifically for the tenants, which helps them to find their apartments. They can make ideal and instance choice with the help of different parameters like Geolocation services, range, size, amenities etc.

There is a rental manager feature within the app, which allows you to list the property or buy the property. It also verifies your listing. You even get checked for the credit score and criminal record, which makes Zillow app more secure and reliable than its competitors.

For users planning to rent or buy a property, the most important consideration is the price of that property. Thus, Zillow has added an exclusive feature named Zestimate, allowing users to get an ideal estimate of the cost of the property they are planning to rent or buy.

The profitable business model of Zillow which you can also follow

Zillow follows a very conventional business model but with the twist. It sells its online space to the property management companies for the advertisement purpose. It then sends the qualified leads to the advertisers for further actions. These leads help both Zillow and property management company to earn a decent amount of money.

Zillow is also earning well from its premium service, that provides more online visibility to the agents. To be a premium agent on Zillow, agents need to pay a $10 monthly fee.

Zillow’s other major source of revenue is its house-flipping business. According to Buzzfeed News, Zillow has gotten into house-flipping business in a big way and earned about 41.5% of its revenue from it. House flipping business is basically buying the property and quickly reselling it for profit. During the last three months, ending June 30, the company sold more than 700 properties and purchased 1535 new properties. With that, they have made $599.6 million.

Must-have Features in your Zillow clone app or any other real estate app

After looking at the Zillow app and it’s business model, there are a few features that you can’t avoid having in your real estate app. We have shortlisted a few of them for your consideration.

Advanced search: The search is a fundamental feature of any real estate app. This feature allows users to look for properties based on their requirements. It is vitally important that you make this feature smooth and streamlined to meet the usage requirements. Advanced searches should offer niche requirements and should be an important part of the app.

Sorting: This feature allows the user to sort the available listings based on its popularity, newness etc. You have to introduce this feature into your Zillow clone app to make viewing the properties and adding one to the favourites easy for the users.

Image gallery: The listed properties should also carry images with it. This will allow the user to get an idea of how the property is looking, and what are the amenities property is having. You should ideally upload at least 10-15 pictures of the property.

Social sharing: This feature allows users to share the property details with someone who is looking for a similar property. Users can easily share it via messenger apps or other social media applications. This feature does not only earn you more users but it sells out properties more quickly.

Listing Format: The listing of all the available properties should be done in a format that is easy to view and compatible across the range of devices. The best format for the view is list format which is used by all top real estate apps across the globe.

Map view: Finding the location of the house listed on the app can be made easy with the map view of the location. The users can click on the map view and get directions to the concerned place. This will make their travel easy and effortless.

Saving the favourites: If users like a particular listing or are interested in a particular location, then they should be able to save it with ease. They can always go back to the saved listings and view if it is still relevant.

3D VR tours: With people appreciating comfort and convenience, you ought to prepare them for VR tours that will make the homes accessible while the people are seated at their offices or houses or any other country. It saves a lot of time and efforts, for both the agents and the users.

The mortgage calculator: When intending to buy a house, there are mortgage requirements that users need to fulfil. This calculator will give them an idea of the amount that they need to mortgage to buy the house or property they are interested in.

Digital documents: It is important for the real estate app to have a facility to sign digital documents. It saves a lot of time for both the parties involved. In fact, the users don’t need to go and visit the location in order to finalize the deal.

Camera for editing: Real estate managers or agents deal with floor plans every day. The smartphone camera allows them to click the floor plan pictures and edits it. They can add furnishing details and other things that users want in the floor plan.

Things to Consider While Developing Real estate App like Zillow or Zillow clone app

If you are planning to hire a real estate app development company to develop the Zillow clone app, there are few things which you can’t ignore.

The Purpose: Before you go ahead with the actual strategy to develop the Zillow clone app, you need to have a purpose defined for the real estate app.

1. Why do you believe your real estate business needs an app?
2. How will the app benefit the users?
3. Will your app add value to the life of your target audience?

If you can answer these questions, the next step for you is to proceed with the mobile app development process.

You need to plan the app before you can start the development. For this, you need to identify what your app ought to do, and how it will help the end-users? For instance, the Zillow app allows the rental markets to connect with those who want to get an apartment on rent.

The Zillow app is the perfect place for those planning to invest in the real estate market. It helps them to identify properties based on their needs. You need to identify this same path for your mobile app as well.

Define the target audience even before you start planning the app development process. It is important that you know for whom you are building the application. Is it for the real estate agents or for the real estate buyers/sellers or for both?

Consider the diversity of the market and the huge database that is readily available for you. There are several points within the database and several features that can be developed based on the database that you have identified. For instance, the properties can be listed based on the amenities, locations, routes, nearby places etc. Your database will carry all these data points when building the application. You may need to consider the ideal database technology such as PostGIS SQL database etc.

When developing your application, you may need to concern yourself with the various tech stacks that come into play. In order to integrate the maps feature, you probably want to use the MapKit API. Similarly, CoreLocation needs to be integrated in order to track the user’s location and to introduce other location-specific features.

CoreData or Realm helps with saving the favourites. Finally, social sign-in integration is a must for all the social integration that you want to introduce in your application.

So, as you now know about the Zillow app, its features, and how developing a real estate app like Zillow can make you millionaire, you must be wondering about the cost of app development. So, here it is.

How much does it cost to develop a real estate app or Zillow clone app?

Coruscate is the top real-estate app development company which entertains numerous amount of queries related to real estate app development. Our designers and developers work in the five simple steps to develop one of the most promising real estate apps. These steps are requirement check, planning an designing, front end development, back end development, testing and implementation.

With our rapid app development technique, we can develop your next-gen real estate app or Zillow clone app within 45-55 days and under $10k.

To know more about the real estate app features, market possibilities, business models and ask for a free demo of real estate app and consultation, contact our app scientist and business expert.

Note: We do not make clones of any exact application, clone means to us is how better we can execute your app idea with existing app features and experience.

The post How to develop a real estate app like Zillow or Zillow clone app? (A complete guide with real estate app development cost) appeared first on Coruscate Solutions.