NEW YORK, May 21, 2026, 15:04 EDT
Opendoor Technologies shares rose in afternoon trading on Thursday, outpacing the broader market as investors weighed the online home seller’s turnaround push against fresh signs that U.S. housing remains under pressure.
The stock was recently up about 4.3% at $4.59, after trading between $4.26 and $4.63 on the day. Volume was nearly 28 million shares, with the company valued at about $4.4 billion.
The move matters now because Opendoor is trying to prove that its iBuying model — using technology to buy homes directly, then resell them — can work in a slower and more expensive housing market. Investors have been looking past weak headline losses and focusing instead on resale speed, inventory levels and whether the company can move toward adjusted EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, excluding some items.
Mortgage costs are still the main drag. Freddie Mac said the average U.S. 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 6.51% as of May 21 from 6.36% a week earlier, while the 15-year rate climbed to 5.85%.
U.S. single-family housing starts fell 9.0% in April to an annual rate of 930,000 units, and permits for future single-family construction dropped 2.6%, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said on Thursday. Reuters reported that higher mortgage rates, elevated inventories of new houses and construction-cost pressures were still weighing on the market.
Opendoor’s latest company update gave bulls something to hold on to. Earlier this month, Chief Executive Kaz Nejatian said the company had reached adjusted EBITDA profitability on a 12-month forward basis as of April 1, and said acquisition contracts were up twofold from the prior quarter. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $720 million, down from $1.15 billion a year earlier, and a net loss of $173 million.
Nejatian said Opendoor was seeing a “step-function change” in margins, resale speed and inventory health. He added, in a short phrase that has circulated among investors: “The machine is working.”
That is the bull case in plain terms: buy better, sell faster, carry less stale inventory. Opendoor said homes on the market for more than 120 days fell to 10% at the end of the first quarter from 33% at the end of the fourth quarter.
The housing data are less clean. Pending home sales rose 1.4% in April, topping economists’ expectations, but Oxford Economics’ Nancy Vanden Houten told Reuters that higher rates, economic uncertainty and gas prices could “keep a lid on home sales until late in the year.” Reuters
Among related names, Zillow Group’s Class C shares were slightly higher, while smaller iBuying peer Offerpad also gained. The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF, a fund tracking homebuilder-related stocks, was up about 0.9%, suggesting the session was not a simple selloff in housing-linked shares.
The risk is that investors are paying for operating improvement before the housing cycle helps. Opendoor is still loss-making on a net basis, and its model remains exposed to mortgage rates, home-price swings, financing costs and how fast it can resell homes. If rates stay high or buyers pull back, the company may have to accept lower margins or hold homes longer, testing the turnaround narrative that lifted the shares.
