Pre-Distress Property Leads — Owner + Code Violations

A worst-first list of distressed properties, with the owner already attached. This Actor reads open building & code violations from official city/county open data, finds the most-distressed properties, joins each to its public owner-of-record (legal owner, mailing address, value) from the county assessor, and hands you a ranked lead with a plain-English reason to call.

The edge: government violation records flag distress months before a property shows up on Zillow, Propwire, or the MLS. This is a pre-distress signal, sourced from primary public records — not a resold listing scrape.

Live now: New York City, Miami-Dade FL, Austin TX, Dallas TX, and Phoenix AZ. Atlanta is next.

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Who this is for

• Real-estate investors & wholesalers — find distressed, often absentee-owned buildings before they list.
• Remediation / abatement contractors — open class-C (immediately hazardous) violations are work that has to get done.
• Note buyers, lenders, proptech — a building-level distress + ownership signal for underwriting.

What's in every lead

Field	Example
distress_rank / distress_score	1 · worst-first within the metro
open_items + reason_to_call	112 · "112 open code-compliance case(s)"
owner_name + owner_type	SOUTH DADE TOO LLC · entity
owner_mailing_address (+ city/state/zip)	7071 W COMMERCIAL BLVD STE 2A, TAMARAC FL (Miami-Dade)
property_address (+ city/zip)	23601 SW 133 AVE
assessed_value · units · year_built · property_use	where the assessor provides it
parcel_id	BBL (NYC) · FOLIO (Miami-Dade)
last_activity_date · distress_source_url · owner_source_url	provenance on every row

Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull via the Apify API.

Inputs

Input	What it does
Metros / states	NY (NYC), FL (Miami-Dade), TX (Austin + Dallas), AZ (Phoenix). Default = all live.
Owner types	Default entity (LLC/Inc/Trust/Corp) — the absentee-investor target. Add individual to include person-owned parcels. Government owners are always excluded.
Max leads per metro	Cap output rows (and cost), worst-first. One row = one lead.

Pricing

Pay per lead — one ranked, owner-attached lead = one billable row: $0.05 per lead. You pay for an answer (which distressed property + who owns it), not a raw violation row.

Privacy & sourcing — read this

• Owner-of-record is public record. Every owner field comes from the county assessor/property-appraiser's public roll — the same record anyone can pull at the counter. This is standard for real-estate lead products.
• Entity-owners by default. The default lead set is LLC/Inc/Trust/Corp owners only. Individual-person owners are included only if you explicitly add individual to Owner types.
• No skip-tracing, ever. We never append phone numbers, emails, or relatives, and never enrich beyond the public record. Government-owned parcels are excluded as non-actionable.

Coverage notes (honest)

• Miami-Dade delivers the full lead: owner name + mailing address + assessed value. Distress = open county code-compliance cases (unincorporated Miami-Dade), updated daily.
• NYC delivers owner name (+ units, year built, assessed value via PLUTO) but not a separate owner mailing address — NYC open data doesn't publish one. Distress = open HPD housing-maintenance violations, severity-weighted (class C/I = immediately hazardous weigh most).
• Scores are computed within each metro (different cities classify differently), so compare leads inside a metro, not across.

Data sources

100% public, keyless government open data:

• NYC — HPD Housing Maintenance Code Violations (data.cityofnewyork.us · wvxf-dwi5) + PLUTO owner of record (64uk-42ks).
• Miami-Dade — Code Compliance Violations + Property Appraiser parcels (Miami-Dade ArcGIS, services.arcgis.com/8Pc9XBTAsYuxx9Ny).

No logins, no API keys, no gray-area sources. The join is by parcel id (BBL / FOLIO).

FAQ

Is this a listing scrape? No — it's primary public records (code enforcement + assessor), which surface distress before a property lists.

Is the data real? Yes. Every field derives deterministically from public government data. No fabricated rows, ever.

How fresh? As fresh as the city/county portals — last_activity_date shows the most recent violation/case per property.

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