Just wanted to reply to a post about Opendoor, but it has somehow disappeared or been deleted. I am therefore posting my own assessment:
The idea of letting an algorithm evaluate and buy houses sight unseen is extremely reckless. On the other hand, there are certainly break clauses in there to cancel the deal if the information provided by the bidder is not correct. And what's good, of course, is that the automated purchase is extremely fast - so you're ahead of the game in terms of time. This is crucial for good deals.
As someone who has already done Fix&Flip himself, this is fascinating. Fascinating, because you shouldn't do that with real estate under any circumstances. ALWAYS LOOK! Never buy blindly! The person who put this together is certainly not a construction person, but rather a tech-savvy investor who wants to roll out the idea of automation and scaling to real estate.
It can either fail massively or go through the roof.
Maybe the traditional construction and real estate people are completely wrong. Normally, however, I would say that real estate and its challenges are so individual that valuation and assessment cannot easily be automated. Of course, there are also valuation tools in this country (Pricehubble, Sprengnetter, etc.) that provide estimated prices. However, many of these results are often well off the actual market value. I would never use these tools for automated purchases.
And the best thing: For properties in need of renovation (which will be most of them), you need a good grip to get the work done. You need expertise and manpower on site. Hats off if they can do it all fully or semi-automatically.
My opinion: This is already a speculative investment. I would only go into something like this with play money, not with pension money.