Ben Mutz bought a six-bedroom home in Oakwood, Ohio, for $800,000, $160,000 below its appraised value. He found the sellers through Unlisted, an app for homes not yet on the market.
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Ben Mutz, a retired Air Force officer, closed on a six-bedroom home in Oakwood, Ohio, for $800,000. The house appraised at $960,000. The sellers never put it on the market.
Mutz found the owners through Unlisted, an app that lets prospective buyers waitlist themselves on homes that are not yet for sale. He said the app showed him which six-bedroom homes in his small community might be available. After a few months, he found a house with the square footage, the size, and the number of bedrooms his blended family needed. He favorited it and joined the waitlist.
Then a neighbor mentioned that the people who lived there were moving. Mutz cross-referenced on Unlisted and confirmed it was the same house. He got in touch with the owners last fall through the app. Over the course of a couple months, they executed the sale.
"I developed an incredible friendship with them," Mutz said. Over about six months, they texted about sports, life, their kids, and their dogs. "We built the connection that you don't traditionally get in a normal home sale."
The owners were retiring and moving out of state. They agreed on a price in November. Mutz's father, skeptical, warned that without a contract the sellers might find a higher offer. When Mutz reached out, they told him, "Ben, we consider you family. We are good." The deal closed in July 2026, timed around their retirement date.
"We live in a very active real estate market," Mutz said. "If a home comes to market and it's a good deal, it's usually sold within two or three days." He believes the house would have sold quickly for more than the $800,000 they negotiated.
The transaction highlights a growing channel in residential real estate: direct buyer-to-seller connections that bypass the traditional agent-commission model. Unlisted, founded in 2024, claims over 10,000 users in the Dayton metro area. The company charges a flat monthly fee to sellers who want to list their home as "open to offers" before a formal listing. It takes no commission.
For public real estate platforms, the threat is twofold. Zillow and Redfin earn the bulk of their revenue from agent referral fees and listing advertising. If off-market tools like Unlisted reduce the pool of homes that hit the MLS, those revenue streams shrink. Redfin's brokerage model, which charges a 1-1.5% listing fee, is particularly exposed to any shift that eliminates the listing agent's role entirely.
Unlisted is still small. It has raised $4.2 million from local angel investors, according to a person familiar with the round. Expansion into other Midwest markets is planned for 2027.
Valuation risk for traditional players may be overdone in the near term. The National Association of Realtors still controls access to the MLS in most markets. Any platform that bypasses it faces legal hurdles over data-sharing agreements. Still, the Mutz transaction shows that a segment of homeowners – those planning to move anyway but not in a hurry – are willing to engage directly with buyers. If that segment grows, the commission floor that protects Zillow and Redfin margins will start to crack.
Mutz said the sellers were retiring and moving out of state regardless. "They loved our story of two families coming together," he said. "They were genuinely excited for us to get the opportunity to live there and make it the next chapter of the home's story."
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