About PropertyDiSHi
A free tool that pulls New York City's public property records into one readable report — and tells you what they actually mean.
Why this exists
Almost everything you need to evaluate a New York City building is already public. The problem is that it is scattered across a dozen separate systems, each with its own search box, its own identifiers, and its own idea of what a property is. Answering a simple question — how much of this building is over-encumbered, and is there any room to build on it? — can take an afternoon and a working knowledge of where to look.
PropertyDiSHi collapses that into one search. Type an address or a parcel number, and you get ownership, recorded sales, assessed value and taxes, violations, complaints, permits, zoning, occupancy and legal history — in one report, in plain English.
What makes it more than a data dump
Aggregation is the easy half. The useful half is the interpretation, and it is where we spend our effort:
- We calculate the numbers the city does not publish. Unused floor-area ratio, buildable square footage, the assessed-value trend, per-unit ratios, assessed building value. These exist in no public dataset — they are derived, and they are usually the numbers that actually decide something.
- We tell you where the data lies to you. A $0 recorded sale is not a bargain. Four hundred violations on a century-old walk-up is not a catastrophe. A high permitted floor-area ratio may belong to a use you cannot build. Every one of these routinely misleads people, and we say so on the page rather than letting the number speak for itself.
- We show our working. Every formula is written out in the methodology, along with the things this data cannot tell you. We would rather be trusted than impressive.
Who it is for
Buyers and investors sizing up a building. Tenants trying to understand who actually owns the place they live in and what its record looks like. Brokers and agents doing a first pass. Journalists and researchers. Neighbours. Anyone who has ever wanted to know what is really going on with a building and did not know where to start.
What it is not
It is not an official or government service. PropertyDiSHi is an independent, privately operated site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the City of New York or any public body. We republish and analyse public records; we do not speak for anyone.
It is not advice, and it is not a title search. It does not replace a lawyer, a surveyor, a licensed inspection or a title company. If a number matters to a decision you are about to make, verify it at the source. See Terms.
How it is paid for
The site is free and requires no account, no email address and no login. There is no paywall and no premium tier, and we do not sell your searches or your data to anyone.
It is supported by advertising shown alongside property reports. That is the whole business model. Ads never appear on a page without substantive content, and they do not influence what a report says — the figures are computed from public records and are not for sale. Our privacy policy sets out exactly what is collected, which is very little: an IP address and a per-day request count, used to stop abuse and keep the service up.
Corrections
We report what the city publishes. If the city's record is wrong, our report will faithfully reproduce that error — and we would like to know. If you believe a figure about a property is inaccurate, or you are an owner with a concern about what is shown, get in touch. We read everything and we respond.
New here? Start with how to read a report — it walks through a real building and the three places this data most often misleads people.