Katie Hill’s dream home isn’t on the market — but one day, it will be, and she wants dibs. That, and a bit of neighborly envy, is how she got the idea for her startup, Unlisted Homes, which is a Top 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,” said Hill, a longtime entrepreneur. As her children grow into adults and move away from home, her neighbor’s lot across the street seems perfect: It’s a smaller home that’s perfect for downsizing, but more 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 told TechCrunch. “He lit up, and he was like, ‘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 he finally puts the house on the market, she will get a right of first refusal, getting her one step closer 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 said. “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, but for houses that are not yet on the market — previously, this was a web platform only, but the company announced onstage at Disrupt that it’s launching an iOS app. Using public records of 21 million homes, Unlisted created “profiles” for each property, providing …