The short answer
Opendoor's own guide (updated April 20, 2026) says its service fee varies by market and property and is shown in each offer, and that it deducts estimated repair costs after the home assessment. Clever Real Estate (updated August 7, 2026) reports the fee was formerly a fixed 5 percent. In an illustrative example on a hypothetical $500,000 Southern NH home, a $455,000 cash offer nets the seller about $422,800 after an assumed 5 percent fee, an assumed $6,000 repair deduction, and the seller's share of NH transfer tax, while a sale at $500,000 with a 5.03 percent total commission nets about $471,100. Your numbers will differ, so we run them on your actual home.
What Opendoor actually is
Opendoor is an iBuyer, which is the industry term for a company that buys your house directly with its own cash, holds it briefly, does light cosmetic work, and then relists it or sells it to another buyer. Offerpad runs a similar model, and a number of smaller cash-buyer operations advertise in Southern NH search results too. The pitch is similar across all of them. You request an offer online, a price comes back quickly, you pick your closing date, and you skip showings and the wait. It is a real service with a real use case. Some sellers should take it.
The business model is not complicated. An iBuyer earns its margin on the spread between what it pays you and what it resells the home for, minus its repair, holding, and transaction costs. Clever Real Estate's analysis (updated August 7, 2026) of 410 homes Opendoor bought and resold between May 2023 and June 2025, using HouseCanary and public property records, found a median purchase price of $313,500 and a median resale price of $341,000, a gap of about 9 percent.
The three costs inside an iBuyer offer
There are three separate costs stacked inside an iBuyer sale, and most sellers I talk to are only tracking the first one. The offer itself, the service fee, and the repair deduction.
The first is the offer price. It reflects the company's estimate of resale value minus the margin it needs, so it typically lands below what the same home could bring on the open market.
The second is the service fee. Opendoor's own guide (updated April 20, 2026) says the fee varies by market and property, is shown up front in each offer, and is not published as a fixed percentage. Clever reports it was formerly a fixed 5 percent and is now variable. Read the percentage on your own offer summary before you compare anything.
The third is the repair deduction. After the home assessment, Opendoor deducts an estimated cost for the repairs it says the home needs before resale. Its guide lists ranges from $500 to $2,000 for minor repairs, $2,000 to $8,000 for moderate repairs, and $8,000 to $20,000 or more for major ones.
An illustrative example on a hypothetical $500K home
Illustrative example only. The home is hypothetical, and every input below is an assumption chosen to show how the math works. None of it is a quote from Opendoor or a promise about what your home will sell for.
The home: a Southern NH colonial with an estimated open-market value of $500,000.
The iBuyer path. Assume a cash offer of $455,000, about 9 percent below that value, in line with the purchase-to-resale gap in the Clever analysis. Assume a 5 percent service fee, Opendoor's former fixed rate per Clever, which is $22,750. Assume a $6,000 repair deduction, inside the moderate range in Opendoor's guide. The seller's share of the NH real estate transfer tax is $0.75 per $100 of price under RSA 78-B:1 and RSA 78-B:4, which is $3,413 on $455,000. Net to the seller: about $422,800.
The listing path. Assume the home sells at its $500,000 value and the seller covers a total commission of 5.03 percent, the New Hampshire average in Clever's August 2026 survey, which is $25,150. The seller's transfer tax share is $3,750. Net to the seller: about $471,100.
Swipe sideways to see every column.
| Line | iBuyer path | Listing path |
|---|---|---|
| Sale price | $455,000 | $500,000 |
| Fee or commission rate | 5% (assumed) | 5.03% |
| Service fee or commission | $22,750 | $25,150 |
| Repair deduction | $6,000 (assumed) | Not in this example |
| Seller's NH transfer tax | $3,413 | $3,750 |
| Net to the seller | $422,800 | $471,100 |
Every input is an assumption; nets rounded to the nearest $100, before attorney, title, and other closing costs. Source: Opendoor guide (updated Apr 20, 2026); Clever Real Estate, Is Opendoor Worth It (Aug 7, 2026); Clever NH commission survey (Aug 2026); RSA 78-B:1.
In this example the gap is about $48,000. Both figures are before attorney, title, and other closing costs, and before any pre-listing preparation or carrying costs on the listing path. Commission is negotiable, and we set yours together, in writing, before anything is signed. A home that sells below its estimated value, or sits longer, narrows the gap. A lower iBuyer offer, a higher fee, or a larger repair deduction widens it.
You can read more about how listing-side commission works in my commission explainer and on my commission page.
The trade the seller is actually making
Here is the thing that rarely gets said clearly. The iBuyer offer is not bad. It is a specific trade. The seller gives up some equity in exchange for four things that are genuinely valuable to certain people.
Speed. The offer comes quickly, and the seller picks the closing date from the window the company offers.
Certainty. There is no buyer financing contingency, no inspection re-negotiation where the buyer tries to reopen the deal, no appraisal gap if the lender comes in low.
Zero showings. No staging, no cleaning the house every Saturday morning, no strangers walking through the kitchen.
No repair negotiation with a buyer. The repair deduction is set by the company. The seller does not write checks to contractors or chase estimates.
If those four things are worth the gap to you, an iBuyer is the right call. For an estate executor with a hard probate deadline, it might be. For a job relocation with a fixed start date and no flexibility, it might be. The goal is to know the number you are trading away before you sign.
When Opendoor is the right call
I will say this plainly, because the honest version of this post matters more than the sales version. An iBuyer is the right call in a handful of specific situations.
Estate sales under time pressure. When the executor is in another state and the goal is to convert the house to cash and close the probate file, certainty and speed can be worth the cost.
Job relocations with zero buffer. A corporate move with a fixed report date and no temporary housing budget is a real constraint.
Major deferred maintenance the seller cannot finance. If the roof, the septic, or the systems need work the seller cannot fund before listing, an iBuyer prices that condition into its offer. Many traditional buyers will not take it on.
Houses traditional financing will not touch. Severe foundation issues, active mold, a failed inspection that rules out FHA and conventional loans. Cash buyers exist for a reason.
If you are in one of those situations, I will tell you that on the phone. I would rather point you to the right path than take a listing that is wrong for you.
When Opendoor is the wrong call
And now the other side.
Turnkey homes in a market with buyers. A colonial with a maintained roof and working systems, in a town where buyers are competing, usually does not need an iBuyer. The market is already doing the work an iBuyer charges you for.
Sellers with flexibility. If you can wait a few weeks, it is worth running the listing math before you accept a cash offer.
Sellers who want to negotiate. An iBuyer will consider a counter, but its pricing is algorithmic and its flexibility is narrow. In a traditional listing you negotiate every term of every offer.
This is where the conversation with a local listing agent matters. A good agent can tell you in the first phone call whether your house is a traditional listing candidate or an iBuyer candidate.
What about selling it yourself (FSBO)?
This is the question I get right after the Opendoor one, and it deserves a straight answer. For sale by owner, FSBO, is the other way to skip a listing agent. You handle the pricing, the photos, the showings, the negotiation, and the paperwork yourself, and you save the listing-side commission. On paper that is the highest-net option of all. In practice it often is not.
The National Association of Realtors tracks this every year. In its 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (released November 4, 2025, covering sales from July 2024 to June 2025), only 5 percent of homes sold FSBO, an all-time low, and the FSBO median price was $360,000 versus $425,000 for agent-assisted homes. Some of that gap is mix, since FSBO sales skew toward different kinds of homes, but pricing and exposure play a part.
Here is what actually goes wrong on a FSBO. The home gets priced off an online estimate instead of real closed comps, so it lists too high and sits, or lists too low and leaves money on the table. It does not get full MLS and syndication exposure, so the buyer pool is thinner. And since August 2024 the buyer commonly brings their own buyer-agent agreement, so the FSBO seller is negotiating price, inspection credits, and the purchase and sale directly against a licensed agent, with no one on their side of the table.
FSBO genuinely makes sense in a narrow set of cases. You already have the buyer, a neighbor, a relative, a tenant, and you just need the transaction handled cleanly. In those cases the right move is often a flat-fee MLS listing plus a real estate attorney for the paperwork. If that is your situation, I will tell you so on the phone, the same way I will tell you when an iBuyer is your best option.
The hybrid option
There is another path some sellers take, and it is underrated. Request an iBuyer offer and list traditionally at the same time. If the listing produces a stronger offer, take it, and the cash offer becomes a data point. If it does not, the cash offer may still be available as a floor.
This works well for sellers who want certainty as a backup but would prefer the higher net of a traditional sale. Cash offers expire, so check the expiration date on yours and plan the timing around it. Either way, you make the decision with real numbers instead of guessing.
