A new tech startup is launching in Massachusetts today, built around the idea that homeowners might be more willing to sell their homes if they get a real bid “out of the blue.”

BlueBid Homes allows homeowners to “claim” their home on its listings portal-like platform and start receiving unsolicited but confidential offers from strangers looking to buy a home. Once the homeowner and a bidder have “an agreement in principal,” the company said, it sells the resulting sales lead to a local real estate agent who will then conduct the deal as a dual agent.

“Fewer than one percent of homes in the United States are for sale, and homeowners are increasingly hesitant to list. The order of operations for buying and selling homes is flawed, and Bluebid Homes wants to fix it. By enabling homeowners to privately receive offers and educate themselves before pursuing a transaction or listing their home for sale, our platform will uncover new inventory and play a massive role in combating the housing shortage,” CEO Chris Mackey said in a statement.

By encouraging homeowners who are looking to test the market to sell, BlueBid hopes to provide real estate agents with more, higher-quality leads and pair buyers tired of bidding wars with sellers concerned about privacy and wary of the work and headaches associated with the home-sales process, Mackey told Banker & Tradesman.

The company is using Massachusetts as its test market and currently has dozens of mostly Boston-area single-family and small multifamily properties in its database of properties that aren’t for sale, but whose buyers are willing to receive offers.

Mackey and co-founder Dan Liliedahl come to the real estate space after careers in the software industry. Mackey previously founded investment management software provider MackeyRMS, now rebranded as Verity, and sold the company to InsiderScore in 2021. Liliedahl was most recently the chief technology officer of AirTank, a digital marketing and contract software development company.