How SnagClear Offers a Continuous Defect Tracking Solution for New-Build Homes

The idea for SnagClear came from a frustration I had seen repeatedly throughout my career in new-build housing. I have spent years inspecting new homes and later dealing with structural warranty claims, and I kept seeing homeowners struggle with the same basic problem, they had genuine defects, but no simple way to record and present them properly. People would have hundreds of photographs on their phones, notes in different places, and long email chains with their developer. Even when the underlying complaint was reasonable, the information was often difficult to follow, and there was no clear record of what had been reported, when it had been reported, or whether it had been repaired. Professional snagging inspections are valuable, but they can cost hundreds of pounds, and not every homeowner wants or can afford one. I realised there was a gap between hiring a professional inspector and trying to manage everything with phone notes and photographs. I wanted to give homeowners a practical way to record defects as they find them, organise them room by room, improve the wording, and produce a clear report. That frustration eventually became SnagClear.

The growth tactic that has worked best so far has been publishing simple, practical content about real new-build defects. Rather than creating generic promotional posts about SnagClear, I started showing individual defects and explaining what homeowners should actually look for. This has gradually built a relevant audience of new-build homeowners, snagging inspectors, and other people working in the sector. A recent example was an Instagram post that I promoted for around £12 over two days. The account grew from roughly 145 followers to around 180 within a few days. Those are obviously still small numbers, but the important part for me was that the new followers were highly relevant to the product. The tactic that flopped was advertising a free New Build Homeowner Pack. I had created genuinely useful resources, including checklists, maintenance information, and guidance, and assumed that offering them for free would make email sign-ups easy. The advert received engagement but produced no sign-ups during that campaign. The lesson was that useful content alone is not enough. I need to understand the homeowner’s immediate motivation, communicate the value more clearly, and build trust before expecting someone to leave the platform and provide their details.

SnagClear is still at an early stage, so I do not yet have enough paying customers to claim there is one recurring complaint across a large customer base. The clearest problem I have identified is not a complaint in the traditional sense; it is friction in the journey from downloading the app to completing and purchasing a report. I can see that people download the app, some enter their property details, and some begin recording snags, but not everyone progresses through the entire journey. Rather than assuming the answer was to add more features, I started looking more carefully at where users were stopping and how the app felt to someone seeing it for the first time. I added analytics to understand the funnel and have made a series of practical changes. I simplified the property setup process, reduced unnecessary taps, improved the snag entry screen, made navigation clearer, and changed the report screen so the next action is more obvious after a preview has been generated. The main thing I have learned is that silence from users is also feedback. If someone starts using a product and disappears halfway through, I need to understand why rather than waiting for them to send me a complaint.

One thing I think people get wrong about the snagging market is treating snagging as a single event. The common perception is that a homeowner either pays for a professional inspection around completion or walks around the house once with a checklist, sends the developer a list, and the process is finished. My experience of new-build housing is that defects do not work like that. Different issues become apparent at different stages. Some can be identified during a pre-completion inspection or demonstration day. Others only become obvious once someone has moved in and starts using the heating, showers, doors, windows, drainage, and other parts of the property normally. Further defects can develop or become noticeable months later. There is also another important point in the homeowner journey as the end of the developer’s two-year defects period approaches. At that stage, homeowners often start reviewing unresolved issues and worrying about what still needs to be reported. That is why I see SnagClear as more than a tool for producing one snagging report. The larger opportunity is helping homeowners create a clear evidence trail over time, recording defects properly, reporting them clearly, and tracking whether repairs have actually been completed.

My immediate priority is improving the existing homeowner product based on what I am learning from real usage. SnagClear already allows homeowners to record defects with photographs, organise them by room, improve the wording of descriptions, create a professional report, and track repairs. The next stage is making that journey easier to understand and reducing friction between first opening the app and completing a report. Alongside that, I have started building SnagClear Pro. This is a professional workflow for snagging inspectors within the same product. The aim is to allow inspectors to manage multiple projects, record defects efficiently on site, create reports using their own company branding, and transfer completed projects to homeowners. The transfer element is particularly important to me. At the moment, a professional snagging inspection usually ends with a static PDF. My aim is for the homeowner to receive the project in SnagClear and continue updating the status of each defect as the developer carries out repairs. I am also developing relationships with professional snagging companies, housing organisations, and businesses involved in new-build aftercare. Over the next year, I want to improve the core homeowner product while testing whether SnagClear can become useful infrastructure connecting homeowners, inspectors, and aftercare teams.

One customer created a report containing 144 documented snags, including hundreds of images.

Before building SnagClear, I had spent around 20+ years working in construction. My background includes repairs and maintenance, new-build surveying, quality assurance, structural warranty inspections, management of surveying teams, and, more recently, complex structural warranty claims. I have personally inspected hundreds of new homes and worked across a large number of developments. In one previous surveying role alone, I was responsible for approximately 300 plots across around 30 sites. I later moved into a national management position where I managed a team of 12 surveyors and two administrative staff and was responsible for improving how inspection work was delivered and controlled. Also, I worked with structural warranty claims, including complex cases involving significant repair costs. That gives me experience of defects at both ends of the process, how problems arise during construction and what can happen years later when defects become serious claims. I also had some relevant product experience before SnagClear. In a previous role, I designed the workflow for an inspection app used by surveyors and helped turn existing inspection processes into a more systematic digital approach. SnagClear is, however, the first software product I have personally built and launched from beginning to end.

My biggest mistake was spending too much time thinking about whether the product could do everything I wanted and not enough time thinking about how a completely new user would understand its value. Before launch, I focused heavily on building the functionality. SnagClear could record defects, store photographs, organise issues by room, improve descriptions, generate PDF reports, and track repairs. I was thinking about the product from the perspective of someone who already understood why those things were useful. After launch, I realised that having useful functionality does not automatically create a good customer journey. A user still has to understand why they need the product, trust it enough to spend time recording their defects, understand what they will receive, and see enough value to pay for the final report. I should have tested that complete journey much earlier with more people who had never seen the product. The lesson has been that product development is not only about adding capability. I now pay much more attention to analytics, wording, screen hierarchy, unnecessary taps, and points where someone might hesitate. Building something useful and making its value immediately obvious are two separate problems, and I underestimated the second one.