How to Find Building Permits in NYC

New York City makes all building permit data publicly available. The problem isn't access — it's that the data is spread across three different systems, each with its own interface, coverage period, and quirks.

Whether you're an insurance agent looking for coverage opportunities, a contractor prospecting for jobs, or a real estate professional tracking neighborhood activity, you need to know which system to use and what to expect from each.

The Three Systems

NYC Department of Buildings runs three public-facing databases. Each serves a different purpose and covers a different time period.

What you'll find: Permit applications, job filings (NB, ALT1, ALT2, DM), estimated cost, owner and applicant information, filing status, associated DOB NOW inspections, and approved construction documents.

What you won't find: Pre-2016 permit history, certificate of occupancy records, or ECB (Environmental Control Board) violations. For those, you need BIS.

How to search DOB NOW

1. Go to a810-dobnow.nyc.gov/Publish
2. Click the search icon in the top navigation
3. Enter the property address (house number + street name, without borough)
4. Use the job type filter to narrow results: NB (New Building), A1 (Alteration Type 1), A2 (Alteration Type 2), DM (Demolition)
5. Click any job number to see the full filing details including estimated cost and work description

What you'll find: Complete permit history going back decades, certificate of occupancy records, DOB complaints, ECB violations, active and resolved, and building classification data.

What you won't find: Real-time filing status for new permits (that's DOB NOW), and the interface doesn't support modern filtering or bulk export.

How to search BIS

1. Go to a810-bisweb.nyc.gov
2. Select the borough from the dropdown
3. Enter the house number and street name
4. Click "Go" to get the property profile
5. From the property profile, click into Jobs/Filings for permit history, Violations for ECB records, or Certificate of Occupancy for C of O data

BIS is the system insurance agents should check when doing due diligence on a property's history. A building with multiple open violations or a history of stop-work orders is a higher risk than one with clean records.

What you'll find: Active and resolved violations, violation dates, penalty amounts, and respondent information. Violations include everything from work-without-a-permit to failure-to-maintain to illegal occupancy.

Why it matters: For insurance agents, open violations are a risk signal. A property with active DOB violations may have conditions that void certain coverage provisions. For contractors, violations on a property can indicate that the owner needs work done to resolve the issue — which is a lead.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	DOB NOW	BIS	ECB/OATH
Recent permits (2016+)	Yes	Partial	No
Historical permits (pre-2016)	No	Yes	No
Estimated cost data	Yes	Yes (older)	No
Owner name	Yes	Yes	Respondent
Certificate of occupancy	No	Yes	No
Violations	No	Yes	Yes
API / bulk export	Open Data API	No	Open Data API
ZIP code filtering	Via API only	No	Via API only

What the Data Doesn't Tell You

Permit data is useful but imperfect. Before you act on it, know the limitations:

• Estimated cost ≠ actual cost. The cost listed on a permit filing is the applicant's estimate at the time of filing. Actual construction costs regularly exceed the estimate by 20–50%. A $100K estimate might be a $150K project.
• Owner names are often LLCs. In NYC, especially Manhattan and Brooklyn, most commercial and many residential properties are owned through LLCs. The LLC name on the permit isn't always helpful for finding a person to contact. You'll need the NY Department of State database to look up the managing member.
• Filing date ≠ construction start date. A permit can be filed months before work actually begins. The status field (pre-filing, approved, permit issued) gives you a better sense of where the project is.
• Not all work requires a permit. Cosmetic renovations (painting, flooring, cabinets) generally don't need a DOB permit. The permits you see represent structural, mechanical, electrical, or plumbing work only.
• Processing delays exist. A permit filed today might not appear in the public database for 1–3 business days, depending on the filing type and DOB processing volume.

The Open Data API Option

For anyone who needs to monitor permits across multiple addresses or ZIP codes, the manual search approach doesn't scale. The NYC Open Data portal provides API access to several DOB datasets:

• DOB NOW: Build – Approved Permits — All approved permit applications with cost, owner, and location data
• DOB Job Application Filings — Historical job filings back to the 1990s
• DOB Violations — Active and resolved violations

These datasets are updated daily and support SODA API queries with filtering, sorting, and pagination. You can filter by ZIP code (the postcode field), date range, job type, and more.

The catch: working with the API requires technical knowledge (HTTP requests, JSON parsing, data normalization), and the raw data needs cleaning — duplicate filings, amended applications, and superseded permits all show up in the results.

Or Skip All of That

PermitBeam pulls from all three sources, normalizes the data, deduplicates filings, and delivers a clean weekly digest to your inbox, filtered by your ZIP codes. No API knowledge required. No manual searching.

You pick the ZIP codes. We send you the permits — with addresses, estimated costs, owner names, work types, and filing dates. You spend your time acting on the data instead of gathering it.

Want to see what's in your territory right now? Use the Check Your ZIP tool on our homepage for a free preview.