Katie Hill’s dream dwelling isn’t in the marketplace — however at some point, it will likely be, and she or he desires dibs. That, and a little bit of neighborly envy, is how she obtained the concept for her startup, Unlisted Properties, which is a Prime 20 Startup Battlefield finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
“I’ve always imagined myself as an old lady with a big hat and big sunglasses, sipping a martini by the pool,” mentioned Hill, a longtime entrepreneur. As her kids develop into adults and transfer away from dwelling, her neighbor’s lot throughout the road appears good: It’s a smaller dwelling that’s good for downsizing, however extra importantly, it has a pool.
“I mentioned to my neighbor one day while he was cutting his grass that if he ever wants to sell his house, I was interested in buying it, which I knew was kind of a bold move, but I don’t know, I was possessed to do it,” she informed TechCrunch. “He lit up, and he was like, ‘Are you serious? Because I’m starting to think about retirement.’”
An off-the-cuff dialog become one thing doubtlessly life-changing; Hill and her neighbor determined that when he lastly places the home in the marketplace, she is going to get a proper of first refusal, getting her one step nearer to her dream poolside retirement.
“I’m not really in the market to buy a house, and he’s not really in the market to sell a house, but we were having a pretty meaningful conversation about a future transaction,” she mentioned. “I felt a sense of relief that I was going to hear from him before I drove home from the grocery store and saw a sign in the front yard and had to scramble, so I was thinking, how many other people up and down the block are thinking the same thing?”
Unlisted is like Zillow, however for homes that aren’t but in the marketplace — beforehand, this was an internet platform solely, however the firm introduced onstage at Disrupt that it’s launching an iOS app. Utilizing public data of 21 million properties, Unlisted created “profiles” for every property, offering the identical type of info that you’d discover on every other actual property listings website.
“We put a waitlist on every single property profile, so a buyer that admires a home can add themselves to a waiting list, and then what they’re doing is definitely expressing interest in a property,” Hill mentioned. “We notify the homeowner that there’s a waitlist for their home and drive them back to the site.”
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
From there, owners can replace the itemizing of their dwelling, add extra info, and chat with the folks on the waitlist.
Unlisted doesn’t plan to facilitate actual property transactions by way of the platform, because the sources for these transactions exist already. Reasonably, Unlisted will promote sponsorships on particular person ZIP codes to actual property brokers, whose info will likely be linked to each dwelling in that ZIP code as a neighborhood skilled. Later, the corporate hopes to attach native owners with sources {that a} home-owner would possibly want, like roofers or electricians.
“Our goal is to be a national platform, but at the end of the day, real estate ends up local, and so we want to connect people to those local resources,” she mentioned. “So far, most of those have been real estate agents … We just had our first mortgage company join.”
In June, Unlisted launched the waitlist characteristic, which Hill says has generated waitlists for five,700 properties, or about $4 billion price of potential actual property transactions.
“One of the really important components of getting this business off the ground was the mentorship that I have received,” Hill mentioned.
After listening to Kayak co-founder Paul English inform his story on an episode of the podcast How I Constructed This, she emailed him an early pitch deck and requested if he knew somebody she might speak to for technical help. English was intrigued sufficient that he linked her with Kayak’s former chief architect, Invoice O’Donnell, who turned an angel investor and board member for Unlisted.
“They’ve been absolutely incredible,” she mentioned. “Their experience is so wild. They took [Kayak] public for $2 billion, took it back private for another $2 billion … They’ve seen it all.”
Hill based the corporate in 2022, devoting nights and weekends with one different engineer. Over time, Hill was in a position to make the corporate her full-time job, elevating near $1 million from angel buyers. Final November, she raised one other $2.25 million led by HearstLab, which funds early-stage firms based by ladies.
If you wish to be taught from Unlisted firsthand, and see dozens of extra pitches, attend priceless workshops, and make the connections that drive enterprise outcomes, head right here to be taught extra about this yr’s Disrupt, held this week in San Francisco.
