I'm Nick Jones, Internet Equity Research at Citizens. We'll kick it off here. Offerpad's been around for a while, so I'm sure some folks in the room are familiar. For those who are unfamiliar, can you maybe talk about, you know, what does the business do? It's historically been called kind of an iBuyer. What is that? Where's the company going today? Kind of pre-pandemic, pandemic, and what's going on today? Just kind of overview.
Yeah, sure. We are a—we've been around for about seven years. We're a residential real estate marketplace, which we have—you know, there's a—we have a number of competitors in our space, some that have come in and left. It's a—you know, we're a fairly, I would say, still early-stage category, but a really exciting category and one that, you know, that it just is not going away and it's going to grow over time. We focus on buying homes within a buy box that we define. Importantly, the homes that we look at are homes that have some similarities to other homes, so we can do it based on a data-driven model and at scale. We also have a national renovation service or capability that goes in and also at scale remodels the homes and puts them back out on the market.
The business was founded—Brian Bair, our CEO and founder, founded it with a vision, the tagline of taking the friction out of real estate. You know, we're well down the path to executing that. We continue to refine the model and get more nimble and add products. Ultimately, you know, we're customer-centric, customer-focused, and we want to make it easier for homes that can be bought and sold on a data-driven basis with real estate knowledge to transact and really, you know, ultimately increase the level of transactions across the market and the ease for people to come in and out of single-family homes.
Before we get into kind of the specifics of the business, can we talk macro? I think everyone's aware that residential real estate's a little more challenged today. You know, it's fluctuated. You know, you guys have been around from prices ripping through the roof to kind of stabilization. How should folks think about, or how are you guys thinking about residential real estate from here? Is it more normal seasonal trends, or is there still kind of a lot to unfold?
Yeah. Yeah, we're in a really interesting—you know, what we're growing towards is a model where we can be very successful in any real estate environment. You know, of course, right now everybody is aware that we have the lock-in effect, and it's really, you know, almost unprecedented where real estate, you know, single-family prices have come up a lot and mortgage rates are very high, especially compared to the last, you know, 10 or 20 years. We are focused right now in evolving our company through a difficult macro market, but evolving it to a place where we're very nimble. We're simplifying our cost structure and where our anchor product is buying and selling homes and doing that at volume. Our focus continues to be adding on new products. We are working to have the most touchpoints with the homeowner as possible.
If the homeowner isn't interested in selling their home to us, we can provide them other services, including providing them with the opportunity to transact through a more traditional process. We also offer our Renovate service on a B2B basis to SFRs and other institutions, which is an important product. We're working on some additional products. We're not ready to come out with those today, but over this year, we will have some announcements about additional products.
With kind of the ups and downs of the residential real estate over the past several years, can you maybe talk about the product roadmap? You know, the term iBuyer has been used to kind of describe the business, essentially, you know, or home flipping, but you do offer other products. How should folks think about kind of the cadence of that being a bigger piece of the resident pie?
Yeah. Yeah. Especially with my CFO hat on, the other products have wider margins. It is, you know, we right now, and by the way, in our latest 10-K, you know, because we are so focused on a flywheel, right, that is based on the volume, taking the top of fund, any business that is based on conversion like we are needs to have multiple products to really be successful. We are doing that. Our cash offer is our anchor product and is really important and something that we get really excited about, put a lot of energy into. We have three other key products. As I said, you know, this is going to evolve over time. Our Renovate business, it has grown 50% year over year. It is growing quickly, and you can see that in our public financials.
We have an Agent Partnership Program, which gives our home sellers that have reached out to us an opportunity to go traditional if they choose to. We also have what we call Direct Plus, which is we use our underwriting capabilities to buy homes in the same manner that we do for the cash offer, but they're ultimately purchased by an institution, typically an SFR. Going back to the financials, what's really exciting about those products is the Agent Partnership products and the Direct Plus product have 90%+ margins, different from the cash offer, which is in the single digits. The Renovate product has anywhere between 20-30% margins falling to the bottom line. The diversification is a really important part of our business model.
Great. We'll definitely dive into that a little bit more. Maybe first, can we, you know, there's macro challenges, and there's also a lot going on in the industry.
Yeah.
There's the NAR settlement, which everyone was kind of worried about how commissions were going to change. Now there's Clear Cooperation, and there's a lot of buzz around exclusive listings. Can you kind of talk about the NAR's kind of settlement, looming, Clear Cooperation changes? How is that impacting the industry? Is this good or bad for Offerpad?
Yeah. I think it's, you know, first I need to say we are agent brokerage friendly, and we pay a significant part of our cost of goods sold is paying commissions. We pay commissions on something like 70% or 80% of the homes that we purchase. A change, and we are focused, you know, again, part of, as I said in the beginning, part of our vision is to take what we call take the friction out of real estate. To the extent that commissions come down, you know, and we're customer-centric, at the end of the day, that's the most important, even though we're agent friendly. To the extent that commissions come down, that's good for the customer, it's good for the homeowner, and that means it's going to be at least marginally positive for us. The NAR settlement is certainly not negative.
It's either, depending on how you look at it, it's either neutral or positive. We do write, we do underwrite in the commission when we pay it to the transaction. To the extent that commissions come down, it's just a benefit to the homeowner, to the customer. It could help us if there's lower costs being written in, it could increase volume, and it could just help the industry from a perspective of moving from historically low transactions across MLS to slightly higher and things like that, you know, would all be positive to us.
You know, we talked about macro, we've talked about NAR and industry trends. You kind of, you know, discussed the different business lines. I'm curious about how the go-to-market strategy has evolved over time. Is it more kind of focusing on getting consumers aware of the offering or partnerships? Can you kind of discuss how the go-to-market has changed over the years?
Yeah. I mean, our go-to-market strategy is developing. Our brand strategy is important. We spend money on, we spend marketing dollars on targeted marketing as well as brand. There's really two, you know, there's lots of competitors in this space, but many of the competitors sort of say they have a cash offer, but they don't really. We really do have a cash offer and really do purchase the home ourselves and do that at scale. There's really, we have one competitor that also really does that. This is still a fairly new category, and I think that's important.
It takes time for, you know, right now, something less than 1% of people would say, you know, our buy box is, you know, very roughly speaking, you know, less than $750,000 single-family home that can be purchased and sold and renovated on a repeated basis and on a data-driven basis and underwritten using real estate expertise, but also data.
It's going to take time, but our go-to-market strategy is one driven by the expectation that over time, you know, we're going to tick up and there's going to be 2%, 3%, 4%, and it'll become more and more common for people in this price point to go look for, and for agents to start here, to go look for a simplified approach of just getting a cash offer within minutes and actually getting the cash very quickly with a lot of flexibility, none of the hassle, the traditional process, a competitive price, and the ability to determine when they close and a lot more. We think we have a, you know, this is a marathon, not a sprint. We have a really long-term vision, and we're going to be, you know, we're well set up for what we think the future is going to bring.
For the go-to-market and competition, do you view competition as a big factor today, or is it just the opportunity so early that competition is kind of a more distant concern?
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. You know, a couple of years ago, Zillow and others, there was more competition a couple of years ago. You know, as I've sort of just said, we're still an evolving category and business model. You know, competition is going to be different, you know, as this business grows and as this sector grows. Right now, competition is sort of disaggregated. There's market by market. There's home buyers that do something like us, not exactly. You know, so I'd say there is competition, but it's really, you know, the way I think about it right now is it's really us and our main competitor. That's going to change over time as this becomes a bigger marketplace.
That makes sense. Can you talk about how the buy box has evolved? You know, can all homes fit this model? Is there kind of a specific part? You know, you're only in a certain number of markets. Can this be national, or is it really?
Yeah. I mean, you know, this is a hard model if you're looking at, you know, a bespoke home. We're probably, you know, I'm probably not going to be around by the time this model goes into New York City or San Francisco, right, because there's just every home is different. It's just hard to, you know, we need to, you know, we need to have homes that are really similar and that, you know, Sunbelt suburbs and things like that are the obvious place to start. Yeah, I think that's the main point there.
Can you, you touched on asset-light services. How are you kind of as a CFO balancing investment and the core business, which is buying and, you know, creating a marketplace for buying and selling homes versus investing in some of these asset-light services? You know, is the core business critical for the asset-light services to work? How do you think about kind of the capital allocation strategy behind investing behind these initiatives?
Yeah. I mean, it is, you know, it's overused, but it's the right, you know, it is a flywheel. When we invest, like right now, for instance, we took down volumes intentionally in third and fourth quarter and invested in both, you know, not just investing dollars, but investing, you know, our thought process and our leadership in taking the company to a place where it's much leaner and can eventually be profitable in any real estate environment. When we invest in the cash offer, we're also investing in our other services. We're approaching the market right now, and we talked about this on our last earnings call based on a three-pillar approach. We've executed across, and we're going to continue to execute across the first pillar, which is cost outs and efficiencies.
We have also executed across second and third quarter and into this year around retooling our cash offer process, which also makes it more efficient. Importantly, we have made some changes that put us in the living room, in contact with the customer much more often than the way that we used to do it. Finally, our third pillar is investing in new products, Nick, and we are focused on that as we move across this year. Right now we have four core products, and that is going to evolve. We are really excited about what that looks like. We are doing it, I would add, in a way where we can be really successful even in this tougher real estate environment and not relying on potential change or tailwinds and relief from the lock-in effect and all that.
We're doing it in a way where we're going to take the business to profitability in this environment and then just benefit from any tailwinds that eventually will come.
As we think about, I guess, tailwinds eventually coming, you know, today, Offerpad's, I think, in around 26 markets. You've talked about kind of Sunbelt, homes that are similar. How should investors think about eventual market expansion? Is it getting things work in these markets? Is it cheap to enter new markets? What are kind of the puts and takes?
Yeah. We do it in different ways. We also look at deeper penetration in markets. Our model is very flexible. It's not difficult for, we have boots on the ground in all the markets, but we do it. We're thoughtful in how we do that. We try to make it as lean as possible. You know, when I think about new markets, it's also deeper penetration into existing markets. Another factor is our Renovate service, right, which renovates the homes that we buy and sell, but also, you know, we use the same team to provide a B2B service that's completely separate from our cash offer to institutions. We are in some markets just for only with Renovate and not with cash offer.
There have been some situations where that's a nice way to efficiently get into a new market, step in with one of our asset-light products, and then follow with the cash offer. Right now, we don't have a big focus on new markets for a number of reasons, some of which I've talked about. You know, we've made some changes and, you know, I keep on mentioning costs, but it's so important. We're focused on a really lean structure and we're executing through that. There will be new products, there will be new markets, and that's in our roadmap. You know, we're executing across a plan and not quite at that point at this point in time.
In the markets that you're in today, can you kind of talk through, I guess, the users of the platform and the service? What are the key use cases? Has it changed from kind of the pandemic till now? Can you kind of help folks understand, you know, why folks come to use Offerpad versus maybe doing a traditional route? Are they more educated on the cost that actually takes to sell a home?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'd start by saying we offer a very competitive price. I still think there's brand marketing and things that we're going to have to do to make that sort of a household and every broker and every agent, you know, something that is accepted across all of our markets and across North America. You know, a number of things have changed. We have tightened our buy box. We have evolved, but we're largely pretty similar in the product that we offer or the product that we envisioned seven years ago. Again, we were buying homes north of $1 million. We're not doing that right now. We have seven years of experience and that's what drives some of the changes.
You know, like any business, we've taken our learnings and we have a lot of data that we've collected over seven years in addition to public data that we use. There are some differences in how we buy, the price point, you know, certain characteristics that matter, you know, like is there a power line going through the backyard and things like that that might take somebody out of the buy box. I think I would say we've just gotten, you know, just like anybody with or any business with experience, we've evolved to a place where we just have a higher probability of really executing right and getting the return that we're looking for.
We got about four minutes left. I want to see if anyone has questions before I continue. Okay. Great. We'll keep going. I think this is obligatory at this point. You know, how is AI going to play a role in the business in the future?
Yeah. I mean, it's going to, from a cost perspective, I know I'm so focused on cost, but it's really important. You know, automation is one of the ways that we're simplifying our approach. You know, so I think that's really the biggest driver. You know, from a product perspective, it's going to play in. And I think with respect to how the consumer interacts with us, you know, that's going to be, it's going to affect, I mean, it's really going to affect everything, right? Where I see it right now is really on our cost base.
Great. You know, we're talking about cost. Maybe we switch gears to the balance sheet. You know, how do you feel about the current situation, the cash on hand? Do you, you know, potentially need to raise capital in the future to kind of scale this thing to kind of what you could see it being?
Yeah. We are, you know, we mentioned this on our earnings call, but we are looking at some capital markets alternatives. This business is really, Offerpad is really clean from a balance sheet perspective. We have, you know, from our equity is common and that's it. And we effectively have no net debt. We have no corporate debt. You know, if you look at our inventory as marketable securities, we have net cash. You know, so we're excited about the strength that that brings us without, you know, we're not burdened by a tough situation from a balance sheet perspective. We have a lot of flexibility there. We ended the year with $43 million in cash and then another $40 million-plus in the net value of our homes minus the asset-backed facilities behind them.
We moderated, you know, five or six million over fourth quarter, you know, from 90 to 85. You know, we think that there's, you know, plenty of runway to do everything that we're looking to do. Then on top of that, you know, we've talked about, you know, pillar three, which is deeper penetration into markets and more products and all that. Of course, having additional liquidity and more flexibility from a balance sheet perspective and to the extent that we need to source cash, you know, is going to be, you know, or could be important. We have talked publicly about, you know, some work we're doing there and some things that are potentially to come as we potentially make some adjustments to our balance sheet.
Great. Peter, to wrap things up here, you know, what do you see as the biggest misconception by investors about Offerpad's business today? Like, what do you want folks listening or in the room to kind of walk away with?
Yeah. I want one thing. I think the biggest misconception is, and so I'll compare to, I don't know if this is a great comparison, but to Amazon, right? Fifteen years ago, none of us would have, I think, would have expected that we'd go buy Tide and paper towels, you know, just on the computer. You know, and that it would be, you know, similar prices driving down the street to the supermarket. I think it's the same thing. You know, it's like saying not a perfect analogy, but the best one I can come up with is there's something similar here, right? There is a misconception because, you know, some of, you know, regional competitors and things and some people that consider us part of the same category, you know, buy at a discount.
We offer the consumer a very compelling offer and with simplifying the process and leaving them with, you know, with very comparable value to what they would have been able to receive if they went through a four-month process traditional and people walking through their homes. Yeah, I think that's something that's going to change over time. Why not just work through a marketplace, a market maker like Offerpad? You know, if you can transact on your home within days instead of within months and really get and end up with the same result.
Great. Peter, thank you so much for doing this. That concludes our conversation.
My pleasure.