Katie Hill’s dream home isn’t on the market yet, but it will be on the market someday, and she wants to put it on the market. That, and a little envy from her neighbors, gave her the idea for her startup, Unlisted Homes. Unlisted Homes has been named a Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
“I always imagined myself as an old lady with a big hat and big sunglasses drinking martinis by the pool,” said Hill, a longtime entrepreneur. As her children grow up and move away from home, the neighbor’s property across the street seems perfect. It’s a perfect tiny house for downsizing, but more importantly, it has a pool.
“One day while my neighbor was mowing his lawn, I told him that if he wanted to sell his house, I wanted to buy it too. I knew it was a bit of a bold move, but I don’t know. I was so compulsive that I had to do it,” she told TechCrunch. “He lit up and was like, ‘Are you serious? Because he’s starting to think about retirement.’
A casual conversation turned into something potentially life-changing. Ms. Hill and her neighbor decided that when he finally put the house on the market, she would get the right of first refusal and move one step closer to the poolside retirement of her dreams.
“I’m not actually going to buy a house, and he’s not actually going to sell a house, but we were having very fruitful conversations about future transactions,” she said. “Before I drove home from the grocery store, I was relieved to know he would contact me, but then I saw the sign in my front yard and had to run, and I wondered how many other people up and down the block were thinking the same thing.”
Unlisted is similar to Zillow, but for homes that aren’t yet on the market. Previously this was only a web platform, but the company announced on stage at Disrupt that it would be releasing an iOS app. Unlisted used public records for 21 million homes to create a “profile” for each property, providing the same type of information found on other real estate listing sites.
“We have a waiting list on every property profile, so buyers who are interested in a home can add themselves to the waiting list and that way they are definitely interested in the property,” Mr Hill said. “We notify homeowners that we have a waiting list for their homes and we drive them back to the site.”
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From there, homeowners can update their home’s listing, add information, and chat with people on the waitlist.
Unlisted has no plans to facilitate real estate transactions through its platform as resources for real estate transactions already exist. Rather, Unlisted sells sponsorships to real estate agents based on individual zip codes, and their information is linked to all homes within that zip code as local experts. The company then hopes to connect local homeowners with resources they may need, such as roofers and electricians.
“Our goal is to be a national platform, but at the end of the day, real estate is local, so we want to connect people to local resources,” she said. “So far, most of them have been real estate agents. We just joined our first mortgage company.”
Unlisted launched its waitlist feature in June, which Hill said has generated a waiting list of 5,700 homes, or about $4 billion worth of potential real estate deals.
“One of the really important factors in getting this business off the ground was the mentorship I received,” Hill said.
After hearing Kayak co-founder Paul English speak about her story on an episode of the podcast How I Built This, she emailed him some initial pitch materials and asked if he knew anyone she could talk to if she needed technical help. English was so intrigued that he connected her with Kayak’s former chief architect, Bill O’Donnell. Bill O’Donnell is an angel investor and director of Unlisted.
“They were really great,” she said. “Their experience is pretty wild. They took (Kayak) public for $2 billion and took it private again for another $2 billion… They’ve seen it all.”
Hill founded the company in 2022, working nights and weekends with one other engineer. Over time, Hill was able to make the company his full-time job, raising nearly $1 million from angel investors. Last November, she raised another $2.25 million led by Hearst Labs, which funds early-stage companies founded by women.
If you want to learn directly from Unlisted, see more pitches, attend valuable workshops, and make connections that drive business results, visit here to learn more about this year’s Disrupt, happening this week in San Francisco.
