SoundSignal v1.0: New Construction Tracker and a Complete UX Overhaul
Track new residential construction from permit filing to listing. Plus a ground-up redesign of how you navigate and use SoundSignal, based on what we learned watching people actually use it.
Two big things ship today: a new construction tracker that follows residential builds from first permit to final inspection, and a comprehensive overhaul of how the entire dashboard works.
New construction tracker
If you're watching the Bainbridge Island real estate market for investment opportunities, timing matters. A new single-family home that just cleared its final inspection is about to hit the market. One that just filed for permits is 12-18 months out. The difference between knowing which is which and guessing is the permit record.
SoundSignal now tracks every new residential construction project on the island automatically.
How it works
Click "Discover Now" on the New Construction page and SoundSignal scans SmartGov for recent residential construction permits. Each project gets tracked through its lifecycle:
Discovered - permit application found in the system. We know someone wants to build here.
Submitted - plans have been submitted for review. The project is real, but hasn't been approved yet.
Issued - the city approved the plans and issued the permit. Construction can begin.
Under Inspection - active inspections are happening. Framing, electrical, plumbing, mechanical. The building is going up.
Complete - final inspection passed. The home is ready for occupancy. A listing is likely imminent.
Each project shows a completion score based on which inspection milestones have been met. When a project crosses into "listing imminent" territory (high completion score, final inspections pending or passed), it gets flagged so you can act on it before it hits the MLS.
From tracking to full analysis
The tracker gives you the high-level view: what's being built, where, by whom, and how far along it is. But when you want the full picture, you can run a complete SoundSignal analysis on any tracked project with one click. That gives you the same deep-dive report you'd get for any property: every permit, every inspection, every condition of approval, every red flag.
The tracker also shows which projects have already been analyzed and when the permit data was last refreshed, so you know how current your information is.
The UX overhaul
We ran a structured review of the entire dashboard and found something that happens to every product that ships features fast: the pieces worked individually, but navigating between them required you to carry a mental map of how everything connected.
Here's what changed.
Everything speaks the same language now
We had four different verbs for the same action. The home page said "Submit." The property page said "New Analysis." New construction said "Run Full Analysis." The watchlist said "Re-analyze." They all did the same thing: start an analysis.
Now it's "New Analysis" everywhere. One verb, one concept, no guessing.
The same cleanup happened across the board. "Bookmark" became "Add to Watchlist" (because that's where it goes). "Resolving Parcel" became "Looking Up Property" (because that's what it's doing). "Docs" in the nav became "API Docs" (because it's not the documents tab). Column headers, empty states, status labels, all consistent.
The watchlist actually works as a triage tool
The old watchlist showed you a list of addresses and a date. That was it. You had to click into each property to see if anything had changed. The whole point of a watchlist is to triage at a glance, and ours didn't let you do that.
Now the watchlist shows risk level, permit count, and how long ago each property was analyzed. Properties with stale data (more than 30 days) get flagged in red. When you re-analyze from the watchlist, the progress shows inline so you don't lose your place.
You can get from anywhere to anywhere
This was the biggest structural fix. Before, you could end up on a job results page with no obvious way to get to the property's permanent page. You could be on a new construction detail with no link to the property report. You could look at a contractor's permits and have no idea which properties they worked on.
Now everything links to everything. Completed jobs show a prominent "View Property Page" banner. New construction items link to property reports when they've been analyzed. Contractor permits show property addresses. Property pages show when a new construction tracker exists. The properties list shows which ones are on your watchlist.
Contractors are searchable
The contractors page now has a search bar. Type a name and the list filters instantly. This matters when you're evaluating a contractor before hiring them, you want to pull up their track record without scrolling through the entire list.
Under the hood
We extracted a shared component library (status badges, risk indicators, empty states, stat cards) and wired it across every page. All the hardcoded colors that would break in dark mode got replaced with theme-aware CSS variables. The new construction pages got normalized to match the rest of the app's typography and layout. GitHub Actions got updated to stay ahead of the Node.js 20 deprecation deadline.
None of this changes what you see, but it means the next set of features ships faster and nothing looks broken when you toggle dark mode.
What's next
The foundation is solid. The immediate roadmap includes showing what changed between analysis runs (so you can tell if a property's risk level went up or down), estimated cost and time before you start an analysis, and batch re-analyze for the watchlist. The new construction tracker opens up some interesting possibilities around automated alerts when a tracked project crosses a completion threshold.
If you're using SoundSignal for property due diligence or investment research on Bainbridge Island, the dashboard is live. Everything described here is available now.