Public Records

[digerati]

TenantNet as been a great starting point for most of the information I've obtained regarding New York City housing law and related issues. Its a tremendous resource for tenants who've been evicted, are being sued, are suing, or are just interested in New York housing topics.

Between TenantNet, and several Public Record resources for NY residents, I've been able to obtain virtually every record I've needed for my upcoming court case. TenantNet was easy to find, but unfortunatley, the rest of my information sources were not. After a few months of digging up information on the defendants in my case, I've been able to refine a pretty good list of public records resources. Resources that I hope are of value to New York City tenants in desperate need of 'disovering' their landlord.

Most of these resources are on the internet, and are able to be accessed free of charge. However, a few of these resources are actual locations throughout New York City, and/or are not free to access. Resources that require a fee are indicated below.

Good luck to all!

NYC Department of Finance, Property Division
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/home.html
(Look under Real Estate Tax > Property Tax Bills)
This amazing public resource houses information on dwellings throught the 5 boroughs on NYC including property history reports, annual tax bills, building ownership, SCRIE reports, actual market and assessed building value.

NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, Building Information Database
http://nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/data/hpd-online-portal.html
Scroll down to the bottom of this page and click 'proceed' to enter your borough and street address. The resulting page provides access to multiple dwelling registration information, ownership, violations and if you're lucky, picture of your building.

NYC Department of Buildings, Building Information System
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/html/bis.html
This system tracks building complaints and violations filed by the DOB. Also, you can perform a search on any licensed contractor.

NYC Department of Finance, Registrar's Office
66 John Street, 13th Floor
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/emailcregister.html - email them.
Obtain a copy of virtually any mortgage, property title/deed, UCC or lien for the New York City area. Yes, you have to physically go to lower manhattan and use the 1980's computer system to look up records, but I found the staff to be quite helpful. Be nice.

NYC Division of Housing and Community Renewal, Rent Administration Offices
http://www.dhcr.state.ny.us/ora/ora.htm
The addresses for rent administration offices in all boroughs are listed on this page. If you have a copy of you're lease, take it there and ask for a 'rent history' or 'apartment detail'. Also, ask for a copy of 'cases by building' to see the activity that has occured in your building.

NY Department of State, Division of Corporations & State Records
http://wdb.dos.state.ny.us/corp_public/corp_wdb.corp_search_inputs.show
If you are looking information on the company who owns your building (or any NY State company), just search for it and the system will return the current entity name; date of organization; county location; service of process address; registered agent, if any; and the current status of the entity.

NY State Unified Court System Decisions Search
http://www.courts.state.ny.us/webdb/wdbcgi.exe/cms/CMS.DYN_NDASEARCH.show
I believe this is mostly for the NY State Supreme court. I've found relevant decisions by using a few simple keywords.

US Courts PACER Service Center
http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
I'm still waiting on my user name and password to arrive via snail mail for an "electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and from the U.S. Party/Case Index."

www.infospace.com
http://www.infospace.com
Great public phone and email records listing. Do a reverse search as well, by email, phone, address, etc.

www.knowx.com - (fee)
http://www.knowx.com/
I paid their fees, and it paid off for me. This is where I obtained some of the most crutial information for my particuar needs.

www.people-data.com - (fee)
http://www.people-data.com/
I paid their fees, and it gave me great people search information on unlisted addresses and birthdates.