About

Some of my first memories sit on a Windows XP machine in the early 2000s, playing 3D Pinball: Space Cadet, the game baked into the Start menu. I did not have a word for what I was looking at yet. I knew I liked the way the machine answered back when I did something to it.

Military service came next. I served in the U.S. Navy, working around systems that had to stay up no matter what. A wrong number or a missed connection was not an option.

After the Navy, I spent my career close to those same kinds of systems. I wrote software, stood up servers, wired networks, and kept information systems running. The titles changed; the thread did not. Get the pieces to work together.

What all of it taught me is plain. I like learning technology, and I like to tinker. I open something up to see how the parts connect, why they connect, and why each one matters to the next. The relationship between systems holds my attention longer than any single system does.

Welcome to my next project.

Sounding began as a tool for my wife and me. We were house-hunting, and the math lived in a spreadsheet, a wall of cells we retyped for every new listing. I wanted something faster than punching numbers into Excel, with cleaner output, in a format we could hand to each other and read like a real report instead of a worksheet.

Here is the part that stung. When we bought our first home, we did not know what the supplemental tax would cost. We did not know about the Mello-Roos we would still be paying, a fixed charge that can run hundreds of dollars a month on top of everything else. Those bills arrived after we had already signed. We went over budget that year, and we spent a lot of it wishing we had seen those numbers before the deal closed, not after.

Sounding is the report I wish we'd had. Every hidden line, in your monthly number from the start.

When we bought our second property in Chula Vista, we put sounding to work. Before our lender and the agents handed us their estimates, we had already reviewed what theirs would likely look like next to ours. We were prepared beforehand.

Sounding's estimates were not a one-to-one match with theirs. Ours were within hundreds of dollars of theirs, and that closeness was incredibly helpful. We knew ahead of time how much we needed for our down payment and our cash to close, and our agent and lender gave us the earnest money deposit figure. Knowing those numbers early streamlined the whole process. Once our offer was accepted, allocating the funds was stress-free for everyone involved. Our lender and the agents told us we were the easiest clients they'd had in a long time.

I can attest that it worked for us. We live in that home now. Our estimates came close, but yours may not. Every figure sounding gives you is an estimate, and your lender, the county and your insurer have the numbers that count.

Next, I will be expanding what sounding covers so we can rent out our other property.

Sounding has changed a lot since that first spreadsheet. The highlights below run newest first. For detailed notes on each numbered release since August 2026, including corrected figures, see What's new.

If this makes your San Diego home search a little clearer, two small asks.

• Share it with friends and family who are looking. Word of mouth is how a small site like this survives.
• Tell me what is broken. If you find a wrong number or something that does not add up, reach out through the contact page. There is an intake form there, and I read every submission.

And if you want to buy me a coffee, I would love that. It helps keep the site up.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back and poke around. There is more depth here on what you would be getting into before you buy.