About
About NYC Building Violations Search
A free tool from the team at ViolationWatch. We built it because looking up one building shouldn't take five government websites.
Who runs it
NYC Building Violations Search is run by Violationwatch, Inc., 433 Broadway, Unit 220, New York, NY 10013. ViolationWatch monitors NYC buildings for new violations across 10 city agencies and alerts owners, managers and lawyers within minutes. The free search here is the front door. If you want alerts, that's the paid product.
ViolationWatch has been running since 2021. It's a small New York team, and the people who answer the phone above are the people who built this.
Where the data comes from
| Step | Source |
|---|---|
| Address → building | NYC Planning GeoSearch (BIN and BBL) |
| DOB violations | NYC Open Data dataset 3h2n-5cm9 |
| DOB ECB violations | NYC Open Data dataset 6bgk-3dad |
| HPD violations | NYC Open Data dataset wvxf-dwi5 |
The city refreshes these daily. Your browser queries them directly. We don't store your searches. The full list of sources, and how we check rules against nyc.gov, is on how we research.
What it can't do
It isn't the official record, and it isn't legal advice. Records are matched by BIN, so a violation filed under the wrong BIN won't show. FDNY violation orders, DOT sidewalk notices and non-DOB OATH summonses aren't in the in-page search. The full ViolationWatch lookup covers those. Before a closing, pull the official records from DOB, HPD and OATH.
Contact
Call (347) 201-2336 or email hello@violationwatch.nyc. If something on this site is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it. Every channel, our hours and what happens next are on the contact page, and how we check each page against the city's own sources is on how we research.