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Comment by flylib | Hacker News Reader

Opendoor is already doing agentless open houses with access codes (smart locks) and cameras throughout the house where people can visit whenever they want without calling ahead, not that difficult

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That seems to me to be fraught with all manner of peril. Suppose a burglar poses as a buyer under an assumed identity, and then robs the house while wearing a mask. What is the recourse?

Apparently Opendoor literally buys (and fixes up) the house and then re-sells it, rather than simply arranging the transaction, so they're selling an empty house.

Ah, I see. That actually makes a lot of sense.

But what if someone steals the appliances? That is actually a problem for new construction.

Buyers have to go through an identity verification stage to gain access to the homes, including, I believe, the taking of a credit card. Not impossible to spoof, but far more frustrating than merely downloading an app, clicking "I agree" and getting the unlock code to burgle.

The house unlocks to a tracked verified identity from a smart phone, Not to random people in masks, would be my guess. Also empty houses are hard to steal only vandalize

I guess I'm asking how the identity is verified. It's not hard to spoof an identity on a smart phone. And empty houses are full of copper wire and electrical appliances (and in this case, apparently, security cameras) which are commonly stolen from construction sites (and cost a lot more than a smart phone nowadays).

Yeah someone needs to tell the real estate people their jobs aren't safe from the robot apocalypse either.

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