How Opendoor helped a couple go from “her house” to “our home”

For Nikki and Pierre Penda, a new home was long overdue. Nikki had lived in her Atlanta home for 21 years. She and Pierre had gotten married 14 years ago. “When we first got married my husband wanted to buy a home together, and we looked for a while, but we had a good location, a good mortgage, it didn’t make any sense,” Nikki remembers. However, “He’s always wanted us to have a house that was “ours.”

In the last year, the couple had begun having serious talks about moving again. They had outgrown their home. Pierre, a consulting engineer, worked from home, and Nikki, a homemaker, also had her life in the home, and they needed more space and an updated kitchen. Also, they were planning ahead for the possibility of Nikki’s mom moving in with them in the future. They wanted a bigger house with a downstairs bedroom and bathroom to accommodate her mom living with them one day.

An anxiety-free way to sell

They were in the very early stages of searching for a new home when Nikki saw an ad for Opendoor. She was immediately intrigued by the new concept because she was dreading the work of selling a home. “What attracted me initially was the thought of selling a house without having to show it, because that was creating a lot of anxiety for me,” she said. Specifically, “my whole hesitancy had been, I have a black cat that’s large, sheds, has long hair, I have a work from home husband— I was like how am I going to get the house ready to be sold.”

She requested an offer from Opendoor and was happy to find that it came back within the range the couple estimated their home was worth.

Selling a home on their schedule

The Pendas were not originally planning to sell their home in 2017. They had a long vacation coming up, followed by the holidays, but the Opendoor offer seemed too good to pass up. They turned to a trusted friend who works in commercial real estate for advice: He encouraged them to take the offer. “He asked all the questions that we had already asked Opendoor and got the answer to,” Nikki recalls, “so it validated our decision process.”

From there, things moved quickly. The week after accepting their offer, the Pendas had plans to travel to Chicago for a marathon Pierre was running. Shortly after, they were leaving town again for a 27 mile charity bike race Nikki was riding. Fortunately, Opendoor was able to accommodate their accelerated timeline. They scheduled a home assessment in just a few days, right before the Pendas left for Chicago. The couple then reviewed their assessment results over phone and email the following week while in Chicago.

Digitally designed for convenience

Nikki recalls how impressed she was at the ease of selling her home virtually. “The thought of selling a home to me means you need to be present to do it. But we were selling the home and we weren’t present for a good part of that time—it was just easy,” she says. Part of what made it so easy was working with her Opendoor Home Advisor, Emma.

“Emma was super responsive—we had like a billion questions because we’d never sold a home before and everything was moving very quickly. We’d send emails or texts and she’d respond instantly,” Nikki remembers “ I definitely felt like we were the only people she was working with— she was that kind of responsive.”

Over the phone with Emma, Nikki chose a close date a few weeks later.

Nikki and Pierre are now happily living in their new home in Powder Springs, Georgia. Nikki credits Opendoor for helping her move on to the next chapter. “We wouldn’t have sold our house this year if it wasn’t for Opendoor,” she says. “I have a lot of emotions around change, and leaving the house was hard. If the logistics had not been smooth, that would have been just another reason for me to be like ‘no I’m not going to do it,’ but selling to Opendoor was so easy.”