This is a site set up by New York City that, among other things, allows you to look up property taxes by address or by tax identification number (“BBL”), property tax history, or to check the last property tax payment attributable to a property.  You can look up water charges attributable to a particular property. You can also search and pay for ECB (Environmental Control Board) violations.  An ECB violation is issued by the Department of Buildings when a property does not comply with a part of the New York City Construction Codes and or Zoning Resolution.  These violations, referred to as OATH (Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings)/ECB Violations, are returnable to the OATH/ECB. There are three ways to search: 1) By ticket number; 2) By name and address; and 3) By OATH ID number.

On this site, you can search for general information on a property in New York City, including recorded complaints and violations, actions, applications and inspections. You can search by block and lot or by address to see if a building has a certificate of occupancy or permit. You can determine if there are open permits filed against a property. You can also search for information about tradespeople licensed by the Buildings Department.  The information provided on this site comes directly from the Department’s Building Information System (BIS).

The Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York maintains a database of information related to all submitted offerings of cooperatives, condominiums, homeowners associations and timeshares. All information, including submission and acceptance for filing dates, plan names and addresses, sponsors and their principals, listings of amendments and their contents, file numbers and other data, is updated as new offering plans and amendments are submitted and accepted for filing. You may want to review this database to review information pertaining to a building in which you are purchasing a cooperative apartment or condominium unit.

The Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York maintains a database of information related to all submitted offerings of cooperatives, condominiums, homeowners associations and timeshares. All information, including submission and acceptance for filing dates, plan names and addresses, sponsors and their principals, listings of amendments and their contents, file numbers and other data, is updated as new offering plans and amendments are submitted and accepted for filing. You may want to review this database to review information pertaining to a building in which you are purchasing a cooperative apartment or condominium unit.

Automated City Register Information System

The Automated City Register Information System (ACRIS) supports the Office of the City Register in recording and maintaining official documents related to real estate, including deeds, mortgages and leases. ACRIS allows you to search property records and view document images for Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, and Brooklyn from 1966 to the present, as well as:

Find a Property Borough, Block and Lot (BBL) or Address associated with a Property
Create Cover Pages and Transfer Tax Forms for Recording Documents

Compute Real Property Transfer Taxes and Mortgage Recording Tax

CONDOMINIUMS PAGE

The Condominiums page  of the U.S. Department of Housing and Development (Hud.gov) allows users to search for FHA-approved condominium projects by location, name or status. These properties are not for sale by the FHA.  FDA-approved condos are condos that meet HUD’s property eligibility requirements. It is important to look up a condominium building if you want to buy a condominium unit using an FHA loan. The condo must meet these requirements and be included on the FHA Condominium Approval List.  Condo associations must apply to have their project added to the list. As a general rule, if the condo development is not on the list or the approval has expired, the project would then need to be approved or re-certified before an FHA loan can be obtained.

HPDONLINE

Building Data

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (“HPD”) is in charge of construction and preservation of affordable, high-quality housing for low-income and moderate-income New Yorkers. You would use HPD’s online lookup to get building data and information about:

Building complaints, violations and litigation
Property registration data
Block and lot information
Charges

The OASIS  (Open Accessible Space Information System) website provides a free source of interactive community maps for New York City  pertaining to open spaces, property information and transportation networks.  It gives you information on a particular property pertaining to: ownership, block and lot and property characteristics including lot area, number of buildings, year built, frontage, number of floors, building area, zoning and floor area ratio (FAR), zoning maps, HPD information and more.

PROPERTY PORTAL

Property Tax Benefit Information – This site allows you to search the NYC Department of Finance’s database to determine if a property is subject to benefits that reduce the taxable assessed value of a property, and thus the property tax owed. These benefits are called exemptions. “Personal” exemptions are based on qualifications (for example, age and income) of the property owner. “Commercial” exemptions are based on qualifications (for example, renovations) of the property itself. The Department of Finance has the following personal exemption benefit programs: Basic and Enhanced STAR, Senior Citizen Homeowner, Disabled Homeowner, Veteran and Clergy. Among the commercial exemption programs are: 421a, 421b, 421g, ICIP, J51, DAMP, UDAAP, and Not-For-Profit. Benefits which do not reduce the assessed value, but are instead credits against the property tax due, are called abatements. The following tax abatements are shown on this site: J51, 421g, CEP/CRP, Solar Electric Generating System, Green Roof, and Condo/Coop.

By using this most powerful search engine in the world. if you Google the address of the property that you are interested in or the name of a particular building, you can determine if anything (positive or negative) has been posted on a site, a blog or in social media.

Associations