Welcome, prop.text readers!

In issue 33, we dive into the absurdity around the newest meme stock: Open Door. Will this end up as a footnote to the meme stock phenomena?

publicly.traded → Proptech jumps into meme stock territory
industry.chatter → Independent landlords: buying & struggling
beyond.the.curve → Builder inventory now 9.8 months of supply

Proptech Gets Into the Meme Stock Act

Meme stocks, it seems, just won’t go away.  

Opendoor's stock price rent dramatic runup is emblematic of the meme stock resurgence in 2025. These rallies are powered by social media and short squeezes, punctuated by fundamentals that don’t justify the hype. 

Opendoor’s shares catapulted from its lowest point in the last year of 51 cents a share on June 26 to a high of $4.97 on July 21, reflecting an increase of 874.5% in less than a month. Trading volume surged, options activity exploded, and the stock triggered multiple trading halts because of extreme volatility. Retail investors on platforms like Reddit’s WallStreetBets, Stocktwits, and X got in on the action. 

The rally intensified after Eric Jackson of EMJ Capital disclosed a significant long position in Opendoor via X, projecting the stock could climb to $82 — a 100‑bagger expectation from his Carvana‑style turnaround model. Jackson emphasized that Opendoor  was not just a play on the hype, but one of EMJ’s largest holdings, and said he believed in its potential despite skeptics calling it a meme stock. (The original meme stock, GameStop rose from $5 to $50 per share in August 2020.)

The San Francisco-based Opendoor Technologies Inc. is chiefly an iBuyer, purchasing residential real estate with cash offers on homes through an online process, repairing the properties it purchases and putting them back on the market. Among their competitors are Offerpad, and companies like Knock and Orchard, which help a homeowner buy a new home before selling the old one using a bridge loan. And there are any number of “we buy houses” outfits around the country.

These iBuyers generate revenue by charging service fees, generally 5-6% of the home price for the convenience of a quick sale, title and escrow fees, and listing fees on the resale. These companies also expect to make a profit on the resale of the property.

The fundamentals do not support Opendoor’s stock price increase, and indeed its meme stock days may be behind it: the stock closed at $2.05 on July 29. Its Q1 2025 revenue rose modestly (~6% sequentially), hitting $1.2B, with a slight improvement in contribution margin (~4.7%). Fixed operating costs declined ~33% YoY, narrowing EBITDA losses to $30M from $50M in Q1 2024. Q2 2025 guidance projects a positive-adjusted EBITDA, with a range of  $10-20M — potentially the first profitable quarter in years. The company remains unprofitable overall, with a trailing 12‑month operating margin of −4.9% and $2.3B in debt, despite holding $559M in cash.

Nasdaq warned in May that Opendoor risked being delisted after trading below $1 for 30 consecutive business days. The stock must trade above $1 for 10 consecutive days by November 24, 2025 to avoid removal.

In response, the board had proposed a reverse stock split. But after the price rally lifted the share price, the company adjourned the shareholder vote set for July 28 to August 27, 2025, signaling caution and a willingness to ride the volatility.

At the end of the day, while Open Door has improved margin, and benefited from others leaving iBuying space, the business model has massive risks. (Zillow shut down Zillow Offers in 2021 after piling up losses of $420 million; RedfinNow closed in 2022, when it was projected to lose between $22 and $26 million.) 

With the housing market is still locked up, and home builders sitting on 9.8 months of supply, the Opendoor rally seems likely to end up as a footnote to the meme stock phenomena. 

As potential buyers have largely stayed on the sidelines so far in 2025, investors who buy homes to flip or rent out have made up about 30% of purchases of both existing and newly built single-family homes, according to data analytics firm Cotality. This is the highest share on record since Cotality started tracking this data 14 years ago. Small investors, those with less than 100 homes, made up about 25% of these purchases while large investors accounted for about 5% on average, according to Cotality. Institutional buyers have been selling more than they are buying. “It’s not just the Blackstones of the world anymore,” Rajan Bhatt, president of Strand Capital, which has purchased about 100 homes in markets including Chattanooga, Tenn., and Indianapolis, told the Wall Street Journal.

Another force altering the single‑family rental (SFR) landscape is the rise of “Accidental Landlords,” as homeowners unable to sell amid high mortgage rates and weak demand are pivoting to renting their properties. This is particularly pronounced in Sun Belt markets such as Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, and Charlotte, where institutional firms like Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent are concentrated. These properties are swelling rental supply and challenging pricing power, forcing institutional landlords to reckon with slowing rent growth and weakened retention. Analysts at Mizuho Securities now anticipate rent hikes slowing to just 1–2% in markets under pressue. Meanwhile, institutional players are adapting by shifting toward build‑to‑rent developments, sidestepping the crowded resale market. 

Independent landlords are having a harder time collecting rent, as on-time rent collections in non-institutional rentals dropped to 83.6% in July 2025, the lowest since early 2021. Over 24 consecutive months of year-over-year decline signal deepening renter stress. Small-scale owners are bearing the brunt: while 2–4 unit buildings still outpace multifamily portfolios (84.0% vs. 82.4%), overall performance continues to deteriorate.

Just Because

Japanese salarymen in the 1970s could avoid the trip home by crashing at studio apartments in Tokyo after a long night of nommunication, the ritual of drinking at after-work gatherings (nomikai) with colleagues and bosses. These 100-square-foot capsule apartments were stacked boxes with circular windows, and the Nakagin Capsule Tower was located in the Ginza District. The last one was demolished in 2022, but of the 140 single-occupancy capsules, 14 have been saved, including one that is now on display in an exhibit at the Moma in New York. A video of the interior and an interview with a Japanese man who stayed at one is available at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Sales & Marketing roles:

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Trunk Tools, New York City, NY

Account Executive, PadSplit, Seattle, WA

Account Executive, Homebound, Dallas, TX

Product & Engineering roles:

Applied AI Engineer, Blend, US Remote

Senior IT Engineer, Opendoor, Phoenix, AZ

Technical Product Manager, Trunk Tools, Arlington, VA

Operations roles:

Property Operations Associate, Kasa, Long Beach, CA

Executive Operations Specialist, Open Door, Phoenix, AZ

Agent Experience Coordinator, Compass, Chicago, IL

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