How to check a landlord in NYC

NYC requires the owners of most rental buildings to register with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) every year, naming the owner, a head officer and a managing agent. StreetSpy groups those registrations into portfolios and adds up the city's records across each one. 2,842 portfolios meet the floor of the landlord ranking (3 or more buildings and 50 or more units), as of October 26, 2026.

Look up any NYC building:

1. Find the registration

Search the building's address in the box above. The owner section of the report shows the owner of record, the head officer and the managing agent from the HPD registration, and whether the registration is current. Registration is required for buildings with 3 or more apartments, and for one- and two-family houses where neither the owner nor their family lives (NYC Housing Maintenance Code § 27-2097).

HPD Online shows the same registration and the full contact list.

2. Look at the whole portfolio

The report links to the owner's portfolio page: every building on StreetSpy grouped with it, with open HPD violations, the class C (immediately hazardous) count, 311 housing complaints, evictions and each building's grade. Large owners hold each building through a separate company, so StreetSpy groups buildings by the head officer named on the registrations and by business address; the same name at a different address is a separate group.

Compare with the landlord ranking or the ranking by borough: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island. Rankings use open violations per 10 units, so a large portfolio is not penalized for its size.

3. Court cases and deeds

Housing court cases HPD brought against the owner, and any finding of tenant harassment, are on each building report.
Executed evictions by city marshals are on each building report, by year.
Deeds and mortgages are public in the city's ACRIS system; every building report links to the lot's ACRIS search.

What the records cannot tell you

Records show what the city filed, not how a landlord treats a tenant. A building with few violations may have tenants who never called 311. Read the methodology for how grades and rankings are counted, and use Corrections if a building is grouped with the wrong owner.

Sources

Other guides: Is my building rent stabilized?, NYC heat season rules, HPD violation classes, explained. Tenant rights guide. Figures from city records as of Oct 26, 2026.