NYC HPD and DOB Violations: What They Mean for a Buyer
HPD grades violations A, B, C and I. DOB issues violations and OATH summonses in classes 1-3. Open violations run with the building, not the seller.
Quick answer
HPD issues housing-maintenance violations on residential buildings in classes A (non-hazardous), B (hazardous), C (immediately hazardous) and I (orders). DOB issues construction and equipment violations plus OATH summonses in classes 1, 2 and 3. Open violations attach to the building, not the seller. Paying the penalty does not close them.
What are HPD and DOB violations?
Two agencies, two bodies of law, two record systems, and nothing joins them. HPD enforces the New York City Housing Maintenance Code and the New York State Multiple Dwelling Law against residential buildings. DOB enforces the Construction Codes and the Zoning Resolution against every building. A file that checks one agency and not the other is half a file.
A violation is a record about a building, not a debt owned by a person. HPD indexes to a BuildingID and a BIN, DOB to a BIN and to borough, block and lot. Neither system knows who is on the deed today. That is the whole reason violations matter to a buyer.
Queried against NYC Open Data on 18 August 2026, HPD carried 2,851,863 open Housing Maintenance Code violations citywide: 673,391 class A, 1,362,616 class B, 577,876 class C and 237,980 class I. DOB carried 578,871 active DOB violations and 278,007 active DOB/ECB violations. The question is never whether a building has violations. It is which ones cost money and which ones block a permit.
Definition
NYC building violation — A notice issued by a City agency recording that a specific condition at a specific building fails a specific section of law. HPD issues housing maintenance violations against residential buildings. DOB issues construction, equipment and safety violations, and separately issues OATH summonses, whose monetary penalties are adjudicated at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
What do HPD violation classes A, B, C and I mean?
HPD grades every housing maintenance violation by hazard and attaches a correction deadline to the grade. The deadlines below are HPD’s own, retrieved 2026-08-18, and its framing of the column is worth keeping: this is the time an owner has to correct from notice before civil penalties apply if sought in Housing Court.
Class I is not a hazard grade. HPD states that "Orders to Repair and Orders to Repair/Vacate Orders issued by HPD appear on the violation list with a hazardous class of I." Reading class I as least serious because the letter sorts after C is an expensive misread. A vacate order is a class I record.
| Class or subtype | HPD hazard label | Time to correct from service | Diligence note |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Non-hazardous | 90 days | Volume is the signal, not any single item |
| B | Hazardous | 30 days | Drives Alternative Enforcement Program selection with class C |
| C: lead paint, window guards, mold, mice, cockroaches, rats | Immediately hazardous | 21 days | Cannot be cleared through eCertification; extra documentation required |
| C: self-closing doors | Immediately hazardous | 14 days | Separate penalty treatment from other class C conditions |
| C: heat and hot water | Immediately hazardous | No time | Penalties run per day and escalate on subsequent violations |
| All other class C | Immediately hazardous | 24 hours | The trigger for the Emergency Repair Program |
| I | Order, not a hazard grade | Set by the order | Orders to Repair, Repair/Vacate and Information Orders; filed with the County Clerk |
How is a DOB violation different from an OATH summons?
DOB issues two different instruments and the record keeps them apart. A DOB violation is a civil penalty record with no adjudication attached; DOB states plainly that "there is no court appearance associated with a DOB violation." An OATH summons is a charging document returnable before the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, which is where the penalty is imposed. DOB calls it the most commonly issued violation.
Summonses come in three classes: Class 1 (Immediately Hazardous), Class 2 (Major) and Class 3 (Lesser). A Class 1 must be corrected immediately and certified to DOB’s Administrative Enforcement Unit. Failing to file that certificate produces a separate AEUHAZ violation carrying its own $5,000 civil penalty, for summonses issued on or after 15 May 2022 at a construction site that is not a one- to four-family home, with re-inspections every 60 days. Class 2 and Class 3 deadlines appear on the summons itself.
| Attribute | DOB violation | OATH/ECB summons |
|---|---|---|
| Adjudication | None. No hearing, no court appearance | Hearing at OATH. Admit, contest, or default |
| Monetary exposure | DOB civil penalties where they apply, e.g. failure to file annual boiler or elevator reports | Penalty imposed by OATH; DOB warns default penalties can reach $25,000 |
| How it closes | Correct, prove correction to the issuing unit, pay applicable DOB penalties | Correct, then file a Certificate of Correction in DOB NOW, or win dismissal |
| Marker once cleared | Asterisk in BIS, e.g. V*7052-18P. Active ones carry none | Status moves ACTIVE to RESOLVE; OATH dismissals need no certification or payment |
| NYC Open Data home | DOB Violations (3h2n-5cm9), older; DOB Safety Violations (855j-jady), newer | DOB ECB Violations (6bgk-3dad) |
Do open violations transfer to the buyer?
In the way that matters, yes. The violation is a record against the building. Closing changes who is obliged to correct it; it does not clear it. DOB states the position without hedging: "DOB violation information is public and will appear in a property title search. Open violations can prevent an owner from selling or refinancing. The Department will not issue new or amended Certificates of Occupancy or Letters of Completion when DOB violations remain active."
That last sentence is the one investors underprice. Legalising a unit, changing a use or closing out an open permit all require a new or amended Certificate of Occupancy or a Letter of Completion, and active DOB violations block issuance regardless of who caused them. The seller’s unresolved 2019 elevator filing becomes the buyer’s 2026 schedule problem.
The money is more nuanced than the record. A penalty imposed at OATH runs against the named respondent, not the parcel. Two mechanisms move it onto the property anyway: HPD repair and program charges billed through the Department of Finance, and DOB judgments converted to tax liens.
Which violations turn into a charge against the property?
A violation on its own is a record. These are the paths by which it becomes a number on the property tax bill, ahead of your position and collectible whether or not you caused it.
- Emergency Repair Program charges. Where an owner does not correct a class C violation or an order, HPD may do the work itself. HPD states that "All expenses incurred by HPD for repair work orders issued by HPD are charged to the premises where it occurs," and that any such charge billed by DOF and left past due "constitutes a tax lien against the property." HPD warns that City procurement rules make the work significantly more expensive than the owner could have arranged privately.
- Active HPD work orders not yet billed. HPD Online has a Charges tab listing work in progress that may produce future ERP, AEP or demolition charges. These are liabilities with no balance, no lien and no line on any tax bill, and they are the most missable item in a New York City diligence file.
- Alternative Enforcement Program fees. Buildings not discharged from AEP within four months of the initial notice incur $500 per dwelling unit every six months, capped at $1,000 per unit, plus $200 per complaint inspection producing a class B or C violation. HPD states failure to pay may result in a tax lien.
- Relocation charges. Where a vacate order displaces tenants, HPD provides relocation services and bills the owner. For orders issued on or after 14 September 2021 these are billed by DOF and, unpaid, constitute tax liens under Admin. Code section 26-305(4)(d).
- DOB judgments converted to tax liens. The Department of Finance states a DOB judgment can be blocked from online payment because "it has been converted to a tax lien," and once converted "it will appear on your property tax bill."
- Rent-impairing violations. Multiple Dwelling Law section 302-a covers conditions constituting a fire hazard or a serious threat to life, health or safety. Where a recorded rent-impairing violation stays uncorrected six months after notice, the statute provides that no rent shall be recovered for the affected premises, subject to the deposit procedure the section sets out. On 18 August 2026 the HPD dataset flagged 156,913 open violations as rent-impairing.
Open, dismissed or certified corrected: what do the statuses mean?
Three different things, and only one of them is finished.
Open means the agency’s record still carries the condition. HPD exposes a coarse ViolationStatus of Open or Close alongside a much finer CurrentStatus, and the two disagree in ways that matter. On 18 August 2026, 68,014 open HPD violations sat at status NOV CERTIFIED LATE, 10,909 at FALSE CERTIFICATION and 5,996 at NOV CERTIFIED ON TIME. A certification has been filed against every one of them. None is closed.
Certified corrected means the owner told HPD the condition was fixed. It is an assertion, audited afterwards. HPD states that except for lead-based paint violations, properly certified violations "are deemed complied and closed 70 days from the date of the receipt of the certification" unless a re-inspection within that window finds otherwise. Tenants may challenge a certification, which triggers an audit; violations found uncorrected move to False Certification status and, in HPD’s words, "remain open."
Dismissed means the agency removed it. On the DOB side the marker is typographic: dismissed DOB violations show an asterisk next to the violation number, active ones do not. Open Data carries the same distinction inside violation_category, "V-DOB VIOLATION - ACTIVE" against "V*-DOB VIOLATION - DISMISSED".
An old violation is not a cleared violation. Uncertified HPD violations do not age out; clearing them later requires a Dismissal Request re-inspection, which carries a fee and during which, HPD warns, new violations may be issued. And no owner can certify, file a Dismissal Request or request a reissuance while HPD charges are outstanding with DOF, so an unpaid ERP bill freezes the whole cleanup path.
How to check HPD and DOB violations before you buy
All of it is public and free. Four systems, and none is a superset of the others.
Resolve the address to both a BBL and a BIN
HPD keys to BuildingID and BIN, DOB to BIN and block and lot. One tax lot can carry several buildings and therefore several BINs, and a violation on the second will not surface from a query that found only the first.
Pull HPD Online, then open the Charges tab
hpdonline.nyc.gov takes an address and returns violations and orders. The Charges tab is separate, and is where Emergency Repair, Alternative Enforcement, demolition and relocation charges appear, including work orders not yet invoiced. The violation list alone will not show a pending repair bill.
Pull DOB from both BIS and DOB NOW
The BIS Property Profile Overview gives the count of open DOB violations, with the asterisk convention separating dismissed from active. Newer civil penalties issued or payable in DOB NOW are not all reflected in the legacy BIS record, so checking one interface undercounts.
Pull the OATH/ECB summonses separately
A different record with a different vocabulary: active or resolved, a hearing status, and a balance due. A summons in DEFAULT is worse than one marked IN VIOLATION, because a default adds the default penalty to the base fine plus interest. On 18 August 2026, 57,887 active records were in default.
Read the DOF property tax bill
This is where the record turns into money. ERP, AEP, demolition and relocation charges appear on the statement of account, as do DOB judgments converted to tax liens. A charge that has reached the tax bill is lien-sale-eligible debt, a different and worse problem than an open violation.
Re-run at closing and check for a live vacate order
Violation records update continuously and a three-week-old search is stale. HPD states its Orders are mailed to registered owners and filed with the County Clerk’s Office, so an Order to Repair/Vacate is not in ACRIS and no document search will surface one.
Why do automated violation counts come back empty or wrong?
Four reproducible reasons, none of them legal. They are formatting and coverage problems, which is why they fail silently instead of throwing an error. Counts below were taken on 18 August 2026.
Zero-padding, and the fact that no two datasets agree on it. In DOB ECB Violations (6bgk-3dad), block is a five-character zero-padded string in 1,803,236 rows, while lot is four characters in 1,483,046 rows and five in 320,189. In DOB Violations (3h2n-5cm9), lot is five characters in 2,445,353 rows. In the HPD dataset (wvxf-dwi5), block and lot are numeric with no padding at all. Query a DOB dataset for Manhattan block 835 and you get nothing; query 00835 and the records appear.
Two DOB datasets for one concept. Civil penalties are split by system of record: older issuances in DOB Violations, newer ones issued or payable in DOB NOW in DOB Safety Violations. DOB’s own dataset notes warn that some violations are duplicated across both. Reading one undercounts; naively unioning them double counts.
Legacy vocabulary inside a live field. The ECB dataset’s severity field carries both the current Class 1, 2 and 3 labels and the older Hazardous and Non-Hazardous labels. Of 278,007 active records, 67,755 used the legacy labels. A filter written against "CLASS - 1" silently drops all of them.
HeritageDeed normalises these keys before querying, which is why its violation counts differ from a naive scrape of the same public data. What it does not do is sell or underwrite title insurance. Reports cost $49, $79 and $129 and ship as PDF and structured JSON. A financed purchase cannot close on a search alone, because the lender requires a policy.
Key takeaways
Key takeaways
- HPD grades violations A (non-hazardous, 90 days), B (hazardous, 30 days) and C (immediately hazardous, 24 hours to 21 days by condition). Class I is not a hazard grade; it is how Orders to Repair and Repair/Vacate appear.
- DOB issues two things: DOB violations, which have no hearing, and OATH summonses in Class 1 (Immediately Hazardous), Class 2 (Major) and Class 3 (Lesser).
- Open violations attach to the building. DOB will not issue new or amended Certificates of Occupancy or Letters of Completion while DOB violations remain active.
- Paying the penalty does not close the violation. Of 278,007 active DOB/ECB records on 18 August 2026, 190,028 had a zero balance due.
- Certified corrected is an assertion, not a closure. HPD deems certified violations closed 70 days after receipt, subject to audit, and false certifications remain open.
- ERP charges, AEP fees, relocation charges and converted DOB judgments all reach the DOF property tax bill and become lien-sale-eligible debt.
- Check HPD Online including the Charges tab, BIS and DOB NOW, the OATH/ECB record and the DOF tax bill. HPD Orders are filed with the County Clerk, never in ACRIS.
Frequently asked questions
- Do NYC HPD and DOB violations transfer to a new owner?
- Effectively yes. The violation is a record against the building, indexed to a BIN and a tax lot, and closing does not clear it. The new owner becomes the party who must correct and certify the condition, and any related charges already billed by the Department of Finance stay with the property.
- What is a class I HPD violation?
- Not a hazard grade. HPD states that Orders to Repair and Orders to Repair/Vacate appear on the violation list with a hazardous class of I, and it issues an Information Order when a building is observed vacant. A vacate order therefore shows as class I, making it the most serious record on the list rather than the least.
- Can I get a Certificate of Occupancy with open DOB violations?
- No. DOB states it will not issue new or amended Certificates of Occupancy or Letters of Completion when DOB violations remain active. For a buyer planning to legalise a unit, change a use or close out an open permit, the seller’s open violations constrain the project schedule directly.
- Does paying an OATH penalty close the violation?
- No. DOB states a summons continues to appear as open in BIS until acceptable proof is submitted that the condition was corrected, even if the penalty imposed at OATH has been paid. On 18 August 2026, 190,028 of 278,007 active DOB/ECB records showed a balance due of zero.
- Where can I look up NYC HPD and DOB violations for free?
- HPD Online at hpdonline.nyc.gov for housing maintenance violations, orders and charges. The Buildings Information System and DOB NOW for DOB violations and OATH summonses. NYC Open Data publishes all of it in bulk: wvxf-dwi5 for HPD, 3h2n-5cm9 and 855j-jady for DOB, and 6bgk-3dad for DOB/ECB.
- Do open violations show up in ACRIS or in a title search?
- Not in ACRIS. Violations live in HPD and DOB systems and, once billed, on the DOF property tax bill. HPD Orders to Repair and Repair/Vacate are filed with the County Clerk’s Office rather than recorded in ACRIS, so a document search will not surface them.
- Does a title search cover violations, and is it a substitute for title insurance?
- HeritageDeed reports pull HPD, DOB and DOF violation and charge data alongside the recorded-document record, priced at $49, $79 and $129 and delivered as PDF and structured JSON. HeritageDeed does not sell or underwrite title insurance. A financed buyer cannot close on a search alone, because the lender requires a policy.
Sources
Primary records and official documentation cited in this article.
- 1NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Clear Violations
- 2NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Penalties and Fees
- 3NYC Department of Buildings, Resolve a Summons or Violation
- 4NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Emergency Repair Program
- 5NYC Department of Finance, OATH-Adjudicated ECB Judgments Settlement Program FAQs
- 6NYC Open Data, Housing Maintenance Code Violations (HPD, dataset wvxf-dwi5)
HeritageDeed provides public-record search reports only. Reports do not constitute title insurance, an attorney opinion of title, or a title insurance commitment.