How to look up NYC building violations

Every violation record in New York City is public. The only real questions are which system holds the piece you want and how much friction sits between you and it. Here are the routes, from fastest to most official.

The short answer

Type the address into the search box on this site. The building's page shows its violations across agencies (HPD, DOB, OATH summonses and fines, vacate orders, litigation, complaints, permits, bedbug filings) on one timeline, free, with no login, refreshed from the city's open data feeds hourly. For most questions (is this building safe to rent, why is there a shed outside, what is open against my building) that page is the whole errand.

The agency systems, when you need the source

The city's own systems hold the authoritative record, split by agency.

• HPD Online is HPD's lookup: housing violations, complaints, litigation, registration status, and charges, searched by address.
• BIS, the Buildings Information System, is DOB's legacy database and still the deepest DOB record: permits, violations, and complaints going back to roughly 1985, plus OATH/ECB violation history. It is dated and address- or BIN-driven, but for a complete DOB violation history it remains the place.
• DOB NOW is DOB's modern portal. Current jobs, recent permits, inspections, and compliance filings (boilers, facades, elevators) live there, and for most violation types it only shows violations issued in recent years. New filings happen in DOB NOW; old records stay in BIS.
• OATH's case lookup shows summons status, hearing dates, decisions, and balances for the tickets agencies write.

The split matters: neither DOB system alone is the complete DOB story, and none of them shows HPD's side. That is the gap aggregated views exist to close.

Underneath everything: open data

All of these systems publish into NYC Open Data, the city's public dataset portal, which is what this site indexes. The datasets are the same records the agencies hold, published on a lag of hours to days depending on the feed. If you want raw data (for analysis, journalism, or bulk work), the datasets are downloadable and queryable directly; our data page lists exactly which ones we use and when each was last synced.

Lookup tips

Search by address, but know the identifiers: a BIN (Building Identification Number) pins the exact structure when addresses are ambiguous, and corner buildings often answer to several street addresses. If an address search comes up empty, try the cross street or the BIN. And read dates carefully: an open violation from 2009 is telling you about the owner's paperwork, while an open violation from last month is telling you about the building. This guide is general information, not legal advice.