Inc. Magazine just did a profile on Opendoor, which is a company that we have, of course, talked a lot about on this blog and that I continue to follow closely. It's interesting to read about some of the challenges that they've been having as a result of their frictionless open houses. Since all you need is a smartphone, the company has been having the ongoing problem of people camping out in their listed homes. Sometimes for weeks. They've been working to address this by restricting the hours (6AM to 9PM) and by installing motion detectors. I am sure they will figure it out. The company is also having to be careful in terms of how it positions itself alongside realtors. There are many livelihoods at stake here. Here's an excerpt from the article:

During interviews, Wu has chosen his words carefully when discussing Opendoor's potential to replace Realtors. "The reality with Realtors today," he said on stage at the Startup Grind Global Conference in Silicon Valley in February, "is their role is shifting from project management--especially in our ecosystem, where we're automating a lot of the processes--to advisement."

Fred Wilson (venture capitalist) has argued many times before on his blog that business model innovation is far more disruptive than technical innovation. I think it's valuable to keep that in mind in the context of this discussion. Opendoor continues to charge a commission fee (sometimes a higher one than is typical), but it also makes money on the flipping of homes and it has plans to vertically integrate other aspects of the real estate business. Will that do it?