Katie Hill’s dream home isn’t on the market — but one day, it will be, and she wants dibs. That, and a little neighbor jealousy, is what gave her the idea for her startup, Unleashed Homes, a Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalist in TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
“I’ve always imagined myself as an old lady with a big hat and big sunglasses, enjoying a martini by the pool,” said Hill, a longtime entrepreneur. As her children grow into adults and move away from home, her neighbor’s house across the street seems perfect: It’s a tiny house that’s perfect for the small size, but more importantly, it has a pool.
“I told my neighbor one day while he was mowing the lawn that if he ever wanted to sell his house, I was interested in buying it, which I knew was a bold move, but I don’t know, I was obsessed with doing it,” she told TechCrunch. “He brightened up, and he said, ‘Are you serious? Because I’m starting to think about retirement.'”
A casual conversation turned into something potentially life-changing; Hill and her neighbor decided that when she eventually put the house on the market, she would get the right of first refusal, bringing her one step closer to the poolside retirement of her dreams.
“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 productive conversation about a future transaction,” he said. “I felt a sense of relief that I was going to listen to him before I walked home from the grocery store and saw a sign in the front yard and I had to scramble, so I was wondering, how many other people up and down the block are thinking the same thing?”
Unlisted is like Zillow, but for homes that aren’t on the market yet — previously, it was a web-only platform, but the company announced on stage at Disrupt that it was launching an iOS app. Using public records from 21 million homes, Unlisted created a “profile” for each property, providing the same type of information you’d find on any other real estate listing site.
“We put a waitlist on each property profile, so a buyer who admires a home can add themselves to the waitlist, and then what they’re doing is obviously expressing interest in the property,” Hill said. “We inform the homeowner that there is a waiting list for their home and direct 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 does not plan to facilitate real estate transactions through the platform, as the resources for those transactions already exist. Rather, Unlisted will sell sponsorships at individual zip codes to real estate agents, whose information serves as a local expert on every home in that zip code. Later, the company hopes to connect local homeowners with resources a homeowner may need, such as roofers or electricians.
“Our goal is to be a national platform, but at the end of the day, real estate gets local, and so we want to connect people to those local resources,” he said. “So far, most of them have been real estate agents… We just joined our first mortgage company.”
In June, Unlisted launched a waitlist feature, which Hill says has created a waitlist for 5,700 homes, or about $4 billion worth of potential real estate transactions.
“One of the really important components to getting this business off the ground was the guidance that I received,” Hill said.
After Kayak co-founder Paul English told her story on an episode of the podcast How I Built This, she emailed him an initial pitch deck and asked if he knew anyone she could talk to for technical support. English was so interested that he connected him with Kayak’s former chief architect, Bill O’Donnell, who became an angel investor and board member of Unlisted.
“They have been absolutely incredible,” she said. “Their experience is very strange. They took (Kayak) public for $2 billion, then took it private for $2 billion… They’ve seen it all.”
Hill founded the company in 2022 while spending nights and weekends with another engineer. Over time, Hill was able to make the company her full-time job, raising nearly $1 million from angel investors. Last November, he raised Another $2.25 million was led by HerstalLab, which funds early-stage companies founded by women.
If you want to learn first-hand from Unlisted, and see dozens of additional pitches, participate in valuable workshops, and build relationships that drive business results, To learn more about this year’s disruption, go hereHeld this week in San Francisco.
