BIS, DOB NOW, HPD Online: where the records live

New York City's building records are split across three main systems, and knowing which holds what saves a lot of dead-end searching. The short version: DOB's history lives in BIS, DOB's present lives in DOB NOW, and everything HPD lives in HPD Online.

BIS: the deep archive

The Buildings Information System is DOB's legacy database, and despite its 1990s interface it remains the most complete DOB record available: permits, jobs, violations, and complaints back to roughly 1985, plus the OATH/ECB violation history attached to a property. Resolved items stay visible, which is what makes it an archive rather than a to-do list. For the question "what is the full DOB history of this building", BIS is still the answer, and OATH/ECB violation records in particular are found there rather than in the newer portal.

DOB NOW: the working present

DOB NOW is where the Department of Buildings actually operates today. New job filings, current permits, inspections, and the compliance modules (boiler filings, facade reports, elevator inspections) all run through it, and its public portal is the place to watch a live filing move. Its violation coverage is the catch: for most violation types, DOB NOW only shows recent issuances, so a violation search there is a search of the last few years, not of the building's life. New records are born in DOB NOW; the archive stays in BIS, and the two do not fully mirror each other.

HPD Online: the housing side

Everything the Department of Housing Preservation and Development enforces (housing maintenance violations, tenant complaints, litigation, property registration, and charges from emergency repairs) is looked up in HPD Online, by address. DOB's systems know nothing about any of it. A building can be spotless in BIS and carry a hundred open HPD violations, which is why checking only one side of the split is the most common way to misread a building.

The practical routing

• Full DOB violation history, or anything OATH/ECB: BIS.
• A permit filed this year, a boiler or facade filing, a job's live status: DOB NOW.
• Heat, pests, leaks, registration, HP actions, anything inside apartments: HPD Online.
• All of it at once, on one timeline: the building's page on this site, built from the open-data feeds those systems publish, searchable by address with no login.

The city has said for years that BIS will eventually be retired, with its records preserved for search. Until that happens, the honest advice is to treat the split as permanent and route your question to the system that owns it. This guide is general information, not legal advice.