New York, January 8, 2026, 09:01 ET — Premarket
- Opendoor shares up about 3% premarket after a steep prior-session drop
- Trump signaled steps to bar large institutional investors from buying single-family homes
- Traders watching policy details and Friday’s U.S. jobs report for rate signals
Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) shares rose 3.4% to $6.33 in premarket trading on Thursday, rebounding a day after President Donald Trump’s housing comments helped knock the stock down 11.7%. More than 100 million shares traded in the regular session, and the stock has swung between about $0.51 and $10.87 over the past 52 weeks.
The moves matter because Opendoor sits in the blast zone when Washington talks housing. The company’s model depends on steady home demand and smooth resale markets, and traders tend to treat it as a fast proxy for shifts in sentiment.
Trump’s remarks also land as investors try to read the next path for mortgage rates. Anything that jolts expectations for affordability — or the pool of buyers — can ripple through rate-sensitive names in a hurry.
Trump said in a Truth Social post that he was taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes and would ask Congress to codify it, saying: “People live in homes, not corporations.” Housing-related stocks slid on Wednesday, with Blackstone and homebuilders such as D.R. Horton and Lennar among the decliners, while government data showed institutions owned about 450,000 homes by mid-2022, roughly 3% of single-family rental homes. Reuters
Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian backed the thrust of the proposal but tried to separate the company from the target. “We’re not institutional investors, our job is to help people buy homes. We don’t hold the homes!” Nejatian said. Investing.com South Africa
The whipsaw underlines a basic problem for investors: Opendoor is not a single-family landlord, but it does buy homes and carries inventory as it resells. Until the White House spells out definitions, the tape may stay jumpy.
A separate filing angle also drew attention. The Vanguard Group reported beneficial ownership of 110,924,631 Opendoor shares, or 11.62% of the class, in a Schedule 13G amendment dated Jan. 7; the filing said the holdings were in warrants, which are rights to buy shares at a set price.
But the policy path is murky. Institutional investors are only a small slice of the market — about 1% of total single-family housing stock, an August analysis cited by the Associated Press said — and Trump’s plan does not directly address the broader shortage of homes. Trump said he would discuss more housing and affordability proposals in two weeks at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
