Dan Green

Opendoor is getting attention for offering mortgage rates that look "below market" and I want to talk about it. This isn't some magic trick. It's actually pretty basic. Here's how we do it: Opendoor mortgage rates aren't marked up. The end. See, when people talk about "market rates" for mortgages, they telling you about the rates they see online from their lender, or from Mortgage News Daily, or some other source. Remember: those rates include 350 basis points of markup on average, based on self-reported data to the Mortgage Bankers Association. 350 basis points is not nothing. As a rough rule of thumb, every 100 basis points markup raises a consumer's mortgage rate by 0.25 percentage points. So, let's all acknowledge that "market rates" in mortgage reflect 350 basis points of markup, which raises a customer's mortgage rate by roughly 0.875. Opendoor changed that. Our mortgage rates are what happens when you take that markup out. It's like what E*TRADE did for stocks. In the 1980s, the market price of a stock was whatever its price was plus whatever your broker charged. It's why every broker had a different price. Today, the price of a stock is the same everywhere. So if Opendoor's mortgage rates look "below market" to you, they're actually not. This is just the first time you're seeing mortgage rates without a massive markup. More here: opendoor.com/articles/why-mo…

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