Selling your house? Here’s a few tricks from the advertising industry to help you think like Mad Men’s Don Draper.

Houses are a product to be sold like any other so some basic advertising rules work well.

Advertisers love to overcomplicate with jargon, strategies, techniques and theories that are alien to most of us. I was in the advertising industry for over 10 years and was guilty of all the above. Now I’m a home stager and, by way of apology, this article simplifies the advertising process into three steps and relates it back to selling your house.

Positioning your property

How you position your property in the market is a crucial first step to getting it sold. You need to consider three things:

The features of your product (property)

Look at your house objectively and write down the key features e.g. spacious living areas, architect designed, near good schools, subdividable block, original fireplaces.

The ‘what’s in it for me factor’

In other words, if someone were to buy your property, what are the benefits to him or her?  What will it get for them or allow them to do? E.g. entertain friends, have their mum live with them, catch the train to work, no weekend maintenance.

Who is your most likely buyer?

Your property won’t appeal to everyone, so based on the above features and benefits you now need to get clear on your most likely buyer. Firstly, think about their demographics. Are they married with two primary school aged kids? First time buyers with no kids? Single professionals? Downsizers?

Overlay this insight with their lifestyle. Do they like entertaining? Do they spend a lot of time at home? Will they want a big garden to maintain if they’re always travelling?
Finally think about their values and what motivates them. Is it freedom, fun, excellence or something else? Remember that your most likely buyer might not be like you or at the same stage of life as you.

Now you’ve got a good picture of your most likely buyer, the benefits to them of buying your property and the features they are looking for.

First time buyers with no kids? Single professionals? Downsizers?

The idea

The idea is how you communicate your positioning with the most impact. In advertising terms this is the actual ad. A successful ad makes the product appealing and forms an emotional connection that persuades consumers to buy the product. When selling, your property is now the ad and it’s your job to make it appealing to your most likely buyer.

Here are some examples:

• Change a storage room into a nursery
• Set up an entertaining area near the pool
• Find a quiet study area away from the living room
• Change a kid’s play room into a formal dining room

Remind yourself that everything communicates.

From the cookbook in the kitchen bench, to the style of quilt cover on the master bed, to the magazines on the coffee table, and the hand soap in the bathroom.

Your aim is for your most likely buyer to think ‘This house is for me. I have to live here.’

Your message

If you’re pitching to entertainers, make sure your visuals speak to them

Your message is how you communicate your idea. When selling your property this covers three main areas:

Copy

The copy should talk directly to your most likely buyer in their language and explain the features and benefits. Put simply ‘what will your buyers gain by buying your property?’

Pictures & video

With a correctly positioned property, picture selection will be easy and will showcase the features and benefits that will hook a buyer enough to view the property. Images should always be vibrant and highlight the best aspects of what’s in frame. Video is being used more often, to offer tours and behind the scenes of your property ‘experience’. Consider if this is appealing to your most likely buyer and partner with your agent to make it happen.

Media

The famous Marshall McLuhan saying “the medium is the message” is important here. If you’re selling a benefit of excellence then a door drop and the local paper may not be the right strategy but a Premiere property listing on realestate.com.au and a glossy magazine could be. Think about how different combinations of media can get your message across in the right way to the right audience at the right time.

And that’s it!

Position your property to your most likely buyer, make it as appealing as possible to them, then communicate that appeal through copy, pictures and the media they use, and of course, ask your agent, they’ve done this all before and can advise. 

This article was originally published on
6 Sep 2012 at 11:59am
but has been regularly updated to keep the information current.

Opendoor is testing its own in-house mortgage product, a move that could reshape how buyers finance homes on the iBuyer’s platform and reignite debates over vertical integration in residential real estate.

CEO Kaz Nejatian has confirmed that the company’s mortgage offering is currently in a beta phase, meaning it’s being rolled out to a limited group of users rather than launched nationally.

The long-term goal for Opendoor appears to be enabling buyers to search for, finance and close on an Opendoor-listed home within a single digital ecosystem, a broader step toward becoming more than just a traditional iBuyer.

This initiative marks one of the company’s clearest moves yet toward a fully integrated transaction platform.

Inman has reached out to Nejatian and Opendoor for additional comment and will update this story if further responses are provided.

Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian: “We started building our mortgage product in January and we’re going to launch it in beta this week.”

“I’m very, very bullish on this product. I think it’s going to be good.”

The original “Opendoor Home Loans” was launched in 2019 and was shuttered in…

— Colin Robertson (@mortgagetruth) February 20, 2026

From marketplace to mortgage

Opendoor already controls inventory, pricing, and transaction timelines for the homes it purchases and resells through its iBuying model.

By expanding into mortgage services, the company would extend its influence into another critical component of the homebuying process. In late December 2025, Opendoor announced the acquisition of HomeBuyer.com, a mortgage education and data platform, bringing its founder into a leadership role focused on mortgage growth.

While HomeBuyer.com isn’t currently a loan originator, the deal strengthens Opendoor’s mortgage-related expertise and buyer insights, which analysts see as supportive of broader lending strategy ambitions.

If fully developed and scaled, such a model could allow buyers to browse homes listed on Opendoor’s platform, input financing information within the same ecosystem and receive mortgage options tied directly to their purchase. That would effectively combine search, financing and closing into a single digital experience.

In scenarios where Opendoor serves as both seller and lender, the company would control a greater share of the end-to-end transaction. It would be a much tighter loop than the more traditional process, where buyers typically search on one platform, secure financing separately and coordinate among multiple independent parties. 

A 2nd attempt at in-house lending

Colin Robertson, founder of The Truth About Mortgage, noted that Opendoor previously operated an in-house mortgage arm — Opendoor Home Loans, launched in 2019 — and that it was scaled back after the housing market shifted and mortgage rates surged in 2022, compressing margins and reducing refinance and purchase loan volume.

“They halted the business when mortgage rates nearly tripled and business dried up,” Robertson said, describing the challenges that many mortgage operations faced as lending conditions tightened.

Under new leadership, Opendoor is giving it another try. “They’re trying their hand at some old tricks using new technology,” Robertson told Inman via email.

Rather than chasing broad loan volume, Opendoor seems focused on capturing financing from buyers already engaged with its platform. It’s a strategy that could improve conversion and increase per-transaction revenue, if fully developed.

This approach echoes broader industry trends in which large real estate and fintech platforms — including major mortgage lender Rocket Companies and Zillow — have sought to integrate more services into a single customer experience, though each company’s specific strategy differs.

Complex and capital-intensive

In theory, embedding mortgage origination into the Opendoor platform could increase profitability, shorten the path from offer to close and reduce late-fallout. But Robertson noted the challenges of entering the lending market.

“Mortgage origination is complex and capital-intensive, and strong established players already exist in the space,” said Robertson.

The industry is dominated by large lenders such as United Wholesale Mortgage and Rocket Mortgage, which lead U.S. origination volume and operate at scale, with significant compliance infrastructure and deep secondary-market relationships that help them fund and sell loans.

Competing effectively in mortgage lending requires more than technology. It also demands funding capacity, competitive pricing, robust underwriting and operational discipline.

However, controlling financing could give a platform like Opendoor more influence over the consumer journey, potentially shaping how buyers navigate from search to purchase and financing. 

While traditional agents currently remain central to most home transactions, vertically integrated models often prompt debate among real estate professionals wary of blurring the lines between marketplace platforms and participants in the transaction.

Agent empowerment vs. vertical integration

Lisa Nickerson, CEO of Infinityy, sees Opendoor’s mortgage expansion as a logical next step, but not necessarily the right model for every proptech company.

“For a company like Opendoor, expanding into mortgage is a natural evolution,” Nickerson told Inman. “If you’re already buying and selling homes directly, integrating financing can create a more seamless experience for consumers.”

But Nickerson draws a clear distinction between vertical integration and agent enablement.

“At Infinityy, we’re taking a different approach,” she said. “Rather than becoming the counterparty in the transaction, we’re focused on empowering the professionals who guide it every day.”

Nickerson argues that U.S. residential real estate remains fundamentally relationship-driven and structurally anchored in the MLS system, making it difficult for technology platforms to simply replace the human advisor.

“We believe AI is at its best when it strengthens those relationships by helping agents move faster, serve clients better and operate more efficiently, not when it tries to bypass them,” Nickerson said.

The contrast highlights a growing philosophical divide in proptech. 

Some companies are seeking greater control by owning more components of the transaction. Others are betting that long-term value lies in strengthening the industry’s existing agent-centric nature.

“Owning more of the transaction increases control,” Nickerson said. “Empowering the trusted advisor compounds long-term advantage.”

‘A product that has never proven itself’

The larger question is whether mortgage integration meaningfully strengthens Opendoor’s core model or simply layers new features onto a still-unproven foundation.

“Adding mortgage doesn’t change the fact that the core iBuyer model has never really taken off,” Robertson said. “To me, it sounds like they’re attempting to ‘ship’ more and more features to create buzz for a product that has never proven itself.”

Opendoor’s iBuyer approach — using algorithmic pricing to buy and resell homes directly — has faced repeated profitability challenges, especially during periods of rate volatility and price correction.

Opendoor’s fourth-quarter results underscored the strain on its model, with revenue plunging 47 percent year over year to $736 million and net losses surging to nearly $1.1 billion. For the full year, revenue fell 17.9 percent to $4.37 billion.

Embedding mortgage could improve margins and conversion rates at the edges. But Robertson argued that it doesn’t fundamentally alter the risks of holding and reselling inventory in a fluctuating housing market.

“Whether AI and technology can bridge that gap remains to be seen,” Robertson said.

Despite its ongoing challenges, Opendoor continues to command outsized attention on real estate social media. And according to a recent SEC filing, the company has formally designated CEO Kaz Nejatian’s posts on X (formerly Twitter) as official channels of communication.

In other words, if and when Nejatian tweets about Opendoor’s mortgage product that’s in the beta phase, those statements aren’t merely playful commentary. They carry the weight of official company disclosure.

Email Nick Pipitone