BeforeYouRent analyzes complaints, violations, and inspections across every NYC residential building — then assigns each one a health score and letter grade from A to F. Free. No login.
Every score is built from open NYC records — nothing we wouldn't want a tenant, a journalist, or an inspector to see. Here's everything that feeds in.
Department of City Planning's tax-lot extract — building class, year built, unit count, and lot geometry for every parcel in the city.
BaselineTenant-reported issues: heat outages, hot water, pests, noise, plumbing. The unfiltered signal of what's actually happening inside the walls.
ComplaintsHousing Preservation & Development code violations, classified A (minor), B (hazardous), or C (immediately hazardous).
ViolationsDepartment of Buildings violations covering structural safety, permits, elevators, boilers, and construction-code compliance.
ViolationsActive and historical lawsuits against a building's owner — strong signal of systemic habitability disputes.
LegalDepartment of Health & Mental Hygiene inspection results — passed, failed, bait applied, or compliance-in-progress.
InspectionsEach building starts at 100 and loses points for every complaint, violation, litigation, or failed inspection — weighted by severity and recency.
Weights are adjustable — a renter with kids may want to weight Heat and Pest higher. Customize them in the building detail panel on the map.
The data is real and the math is honest, but public records have gaps. Read the score as a signal, not a verdict.
311 complaints reflect who calls, not where the worst conditions are. Higher-income and English-fluent neighborhoods over-report; quieter buildings may simply have quieter tenants.
The score weights public records by severity and recency. It's a useful first pass, not a substitute for a walk-through, a tenant conversation, or a professional inspection.
City datasets update on different cadences. A new HPD violation can take 2–6 weeks to appear, and litigation may take months. Very recent events aren't here yet.
Ownership transfers, gut renovations, and new management don't immediately reflect in the score. A bad-grade building under new ownership may already be a different place.
Some city datasets attribute by address rather than BBL. When addresses are formatted inconsistently across sources, a small number of records may be misattributed.
BeforeYouRent is a public-data tool, not legal, housing, or financial advice. Verify anything score-critical against the underlying NYC Open Data records before acting on it.
Housing data comes wrapped in acronyms. Here's what they actually mean.
Type an address, a neighborhood, or a question in plain English. The map will show you every grade from A to F across the city.
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