NYC Building Report: Violations, Permits & Compliance

Type an NYC address and get one clean due-diligence report for the building: open DOB violations, ECB/OATH penalties still owed, HPD housing violations by class, DOB and HPD complaints, every DOB permit (old BIS and DOB NOW), lot facts from PLUTO, plain-English risk flags and a 0-100 risk score.

New in 1.1: a building-systems compliance section: facade inspection (FISP / Local Law 11) status, every boiler's last inspection and defects, the elevator and escalator register, open DOB safety-program violations (elevators, boilers, facades, gas piping LL152, benchmarking LL84, energy grade LL33, retro-commissioning LL87, emissions LL97) and the latest LL84 energy benchmarking (ENERGY STAR score, site EUI, greenhouse gas emissions).

It replaces more than a dozen separate lookups across the BIS website, DOB NOW, HPD Online and NYC Open Data with one row per building.

Who it is for

• Contractors and expediters: check a property before you bid. Open work-without-permit violations, vacate orders or unpaid ECB penalties change the job.
• Real estate investors, brokers and lenders: screen a list of addresses for problem buildings before you spend time on them.
• Tenants and tenant organizers: see open Class C (immediately hazardous) and rent-impairing HPD violations at a glance.
• Property managers and insurers: monitor a portfolio. Run it on a schedule and compare the counts.

Input

Field	What to enter
addresses	One per line: a street address with borough (1520 Sedgwick Ave, Bronx), a 10-digit BBL (2028800017) or a 7-digit BIN (2009171).
historyYears	How far back to count permits and HPD complaints (default 5). Open violations are always included, whatever their age.
maxRecordsPerSection	How many of the newest records to list in each section (default 25). Summary counts always cover everything.
includeCompliance	Facade, boiler, elevator, safety-program violations and energy benchmarking (default on). Turn off for a faster report.
socrataAppToken	Optional. Only needed for very large batches.

{
  "addresses": ["1520 Sedgwick Ave, Bronx", "97-30 57th Ave, Queens", "2028800017"],
  "historyYears": 5,
  "maxRecordsPerSection": 25
}

Output (one item per address)

{
  "address": "1520 SEDGWICK AVENUE, Bronx, NY, USA",
  "bbl": "2028800017",
  "bin": "2009171",
  "borough": "Bronx",
  "lot": { "yearBuilt": 1969, "floors": 18, "residentialUnits": 101, "buildingClass": "D3", "zoning": "R7-1" },
  "riskLevel": "high",
  "riskScore": 100,
  "flags": [
    "Unpaid ECB/OATH penalties: $3,962.00",
    "71 open HPD Class C (immediately hazardous) violation(s)",
    "Rent-impairing HPD violation(s) open",
    "Open DOB violation mentions a VACATE order",
    "63 HPD complaints in the last 12 months",
    "Facade (FISP cycle 10) is UNSAFE",
    "Boiler inspection found defects",
    "11 open DOB safety-program violation(s): Elevators 6, Retro-Commissioning - LL87 2, Facades 2, Benchmarking - LL84 1"
  ],
  "summary": {
    "openDobViolations": 11,
    "openHazardousDobViolations": 0,
    "openWorkWithoutPermitViolations": 0,
    "openEcbViolations": 0,
    "ecbBalanceDue": 3962.0,
    "openDobComplaints": 1,
    "openHpdViolations": 121,
    "openHpdViolationsByClass": { "A": 17, "B": 33, "C": 71, "I": 0 },
    "hpdComplaintsLast12Months": 63,
    "activePermits": 0,
    "permitsIssuedInWindow": 18,
    "lastPermitIssued": "2026-10-05"
  },
  "openDobViolations": [ { "number": "V072126CSR0501RF", "issued": "2026-07-21", "type": "C-CONSTRUCTION", "description": "PARTIAL VACATE ORDER: ..." } ],
  "openEcbViolations": [],
  "openHpdViolations": [ { "class": "C", "inspected": "2026-09-30", "apartment": "7F", "description": "..." } ],
  "recentHpdComplaints": [ ... ],
  "recentDobComplaints": [ ... ],
  "compliance": {
    "facade": { "cycle": "10", "status": "UNSAFE", "filed": "2026-07-17", "priorCycleStatus": "UNSAFE", "engineerBusiness": "FALCON ENGINEERING CO. LLC", "cycles": [ ... ] },
    "boilers": [ { "boilerId": "20000064671Y0001", "lastInspection": "2026-08-24", "defects": true, "pressure": "Low Pressure" } ],
    "elevators": { "activeDevices": 2, "byType": { "Elevator": 2 } },
    "openSafetyViolations": 11,
    "openSafetyViolationsByProgram": { "Elevators": 6, "Retro-Commissioning - LL87": 2, "Facades": 2, "Benchmarking - LL84": 1 },
    "openSafetyViolationList": [ ... ],
    "energy": { "reportYear": "2024", "primaryUse": "Multifamily Housing", "energyStarScore": 6, "siteEuiKbtuPerSqft": 138.0, "totalGhgMetricTons": 1048.81, "ghgIntensityKgPerSqft": 8.75 }
  },
  "recentPermits": [ { "system": "DOB NOW", "workType": "General Construction", "issued": "2026-10-05", "contractorBusiness": "...", "contractorLicense": "..." } ],
  "sources": { "dobViolations": "https://data.cityofnewyork.us/d/3h2n-5cm9", "...": "..." }
}

The Overview tab in the dataset shows one row per building with the risk level, flags and counts. Export to CSV, Excel or JSON, or call it from the API, Make, Zapier or n8n.

How the risk score works

Points for each open hazardous DOB violation (15), work-without-permit violation (10), HPD Class C (6), Class B (2) and Class A (1) violation, other open DOB violations (2), open ECB violations (3), open DOB complaints (3), unpaid ECB penalties (1 per $1,000, up to 20) and HPD complaints in the last 12 months (1 each, up to 20). Compliance adds: UNSAFE facade (15), no facade report filed (5), facade repairs due / SWARMP (2), boiler defects (3), boilers with no inspection in 2 years (3), open safety-program violations (1.5 each, up to 15) and an open LL97 emissions violation (5). Capped at 100. Low below 12, medium 12-39, high 40 and up. It is a screening aid, not a legal opinion: read the records it lists.

Pricing

Pay per result: you are charged only for buildings that were found. Addresses that cannot be matched are returned with an error and are free. A report takes about 8-15 seconds with compliance on.

Data sources

All official, public NYC data, read through the NYC Open Data (Socrata) API and NYC Planning GeoSearch. No login, no scraping of city websites.

• DOB Violations (3h2n-5cm9), DOB ECB Violations (6bgk-3dad), DOB Complaints Received (eabe-havv)
• DOB Permit Issuance (ipu4-2q9a) and DOB NOW: Build Approved Permits (rbx6-tga4)
• HPD Housing Maintenance Code Violations (wvxf-dwi5) and Complaints and Problems (ygpa-z7cr)
• DOB NOW Safety: Facades Compliance Filings (xubg-57si), Boiler inspections (52dp-yji6), Elevator device register (e5aq-a4j2), DOB Safety Violations (855j-jady)
• LL84 Energy and Water Data Disclosure, 2023 to present (5zyy-y8am)
• MapPLUTO (64uk-42ks) and BUILDING footprints (5zhs-2jue) for lot facts and BBL/BIN matching

The city updates these datasets daily; a record can take a day or two to appear. Energy figures are the owner's self-reported LL84 benchmarking, not an official LL97 compliance determination. Privacy: the report never outputs owners', respondents', engineers' or boiler inspectors' personal names or phone numbers, only the business names and license numbers DOB publishes for licensed work.

FAQ

Can I run hundreds of addresses? Yes. Put them all in addresses. For thousands, add a free NYC Open Data app token.

Does it cover Local Law 11 / FISP, LL97 and boiler compliance? Yes: see the compliance section. Facade status comes from the latest FISP cycle filing; LL97 shows up as open "GHG Emissions - LL97" safety violations plus the LL84 emissions numbers.

Why is a count zero when BIS shows records? Some very old records were never loaded into NYC Open Data. Each report links to the BIS property profile (sources.bisProfile) for a manual check.

Something looks wrong? Open an issue on the Issues tab with the address and what you expected; fixes usually ship within a day.