Katie Hill’s dream home is not on the market yet, but it’ll be one day, and she wants it. That’s how – and a bit of neighborly jealousy – she got here up with the idea for her startup Unlisted Homes, which was among the 20 finalists of the Top 20 Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
“I always pictured 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 out of the house, her neighbor’s lot across the street seems perfect: it’s a smaller house, perfect for downsizing, but more importantly, it has a pool.
“One day while he was mowing the grass, I mentioned to my neighbor that if he ever wanted to sell his house, I was interested in buying it. I knew it was a bold move, but I don’t know, I felt like it,” she told TechCrunch. “He lit up and said, ‘Are you serious? Because I’m starting to think about retirement.'”
An off-the-cuff conversation turned into something potentially life-changing; Hill and her neighbor decided that when she finally put the house up for sale, she would have the right of first refusal, bringing her one step closer to her dream poolside retirement.
“I’m not actually in the market to buy the house, nor is he in the market to sell, but we’ve had a pretty significant conversation about a future transaction,” she said. “I was relieved to hear him before I drove home from the grocery store and saw the sign in the yard and had to climb up, so I thought, how many other people in the area are thinking the same thing?”
Unlisted is like Zillow, but for homes that are not on the market yet – previously it was just an online platform, but the company announced on stage at Disrupt that it’s launching an iOS app. Using public records of 21 million homes, Unlisted created “profiles” for each property, providing the same type of information you’d find on any other real estate listing site.
“We have a waitlist on every property profile, so a buyer who admires the home can get on the waitlist and then they are definitely expressing interest in the property,” Hill said. “We notify the homeowner that there is a waiting list for their home and we bring them back to the site.”
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From there, homeowners can update their home listing, add more information, and chat with people on the waiting list.
Unlisted has no plans to facilitate real estate transactions through the platform because the resources for such transactions exist already. Instead, Unlisted will sell sponsorships in individual ZIP codes to real estate agents whose information shall be associated with each home in that ZIP code as a local expert. After that, the company hopes to supply local homeowners with resources that homeowners might have, equivalent to 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 give people access to those local resources,” she said. “So far, most of them are real estate agents… We just had our first mortgage company join us.”
In June, Unlisted launched its waitlist feature, which Hill said has generated waitlists for 5,700 homes, representing about $4 billion in potential real estate transactions.
“One of the really important things to start my business was the mentorship I received,” Hill said.
After hearing Kayak co-founder Paul English tell his story on an episode of the How Ibuilt This podcast, she emailed him an introductory pitch and asked if he knew anyone she could seek advice from about technical support. English was intrigued enough to place her in touch with former Kayak chief architect Bill O’Donnell, who had turn into an angel investor and board member of Unlisted.
“They were absolutely amazing,” she said. “Their experience is so wild. They took it [Kayak] public for $2 billion, private picked up for one other $2 billion… They saw all of it.”
Hill began the company in 2022, spending his nights and weekends with one other engineer. Over time, Hill was capable of land a full-time job at the company, raising nearly $1 million from angel investors. Last November she lifted up one other $2.25 million led by HearstLab, which funds early-stage firms founded by women.
