Your Landlord Has a Record. Here's How to Read It.

A landlord's public record in NYC spans five signals: executed evictions (city-marshal records), enforcement-program placement (AEP), litigation and court-confirmed harassment findings, tax liens, and HPD registration status. Read worst-first, they tell you how a landlord operates — across every building they own.

A building's file tells you what happened at one address. A landlord's record answers the question you actually care about: is this how it goes with this person? Habits travel across a portfolio. Here are the five signals, worst first.

1. Executed evictions

Not filings — executions. An eviction filing is a court case that might settle, get withdrawn, or resolve a dozen ways. An executed eviction is the end of the line: a city marshal carried it out, and the marshal's record — name attached — is public. The current records hold 118,385 executed residential evictions across 46,063 buildings. One eviction at one building is a data point. A pattern of executions across everything a landlord owns is a management philosophy, written in the most serious record the system produces.

2. Enforcement programs (AEP)

The Alternative Enforcement Program is HPD's list of the most distressed buildings in the city — selected annually for severe, unresolved violation loads, then subjected to escalated inspections, city-ordered repairs, and fees until they earn their way out. There are 3,666 AEP entries in the records, and 810 buildings are in the program right now. A landlord with a building in AEP has a property the city formally classified among its worst. A landlord with several — that's not bad luck arriving in bulk.

3. Litigation and harassment findings

HPD takes owners to housing court over unresolved conditions — and sometimes the court doesn't just order repairs, it makes a finding of harassment: a judicial determination that the owner harassed tenants. That's not a review or an allegation; it's a court's conclusion after trial or inquest, and it sits on the record permanently. The current records hold 330 harassment findings and 3,615 cases with open judgments — money owed the city that the owner hasn't paid. Rare, which is exactly why one on a landlord's record deserves full weight.

4. Tax liens

When property debts go unpaid long enough, the city sells the lien — and each sale lands in a public record. The current data holds 264,142 tax-lien-sale records touching 56,396 buildings. Why a renter should care about a landlord's tax troubles: financial distress is deferred maintenance's leading indicator. The boiler that doesn't get replaced, the roof patched instead of fixed — those decisions get made by owners whose buildings aren't paying for themselves. A portfolio with recurring liens is a portfolio where the money runs out before the repairs do.

5. HPD registration

Every residential building with three or more units must register its ownership and management with HPD, annually. It sounds like paperwork; it's actually the foundation of everything above — registration is how an LLC becomes a name you can hold accountable, and lapsed registration can block an owner from pursuing a nonpayment case against a tenant. 51,658 registrations in the current records have lapsed. An unregistered building is a building whose owner has opted out of the accountability system — worth knowing before you're the tenant trying to reach them.

Reading them together

None of these signals alone decides anything — and most landlords have clean records on all five. The read is cumulative and portfolio-wide: executions and an AEP building and liens is a pattern no single building's file would show you. Check the building, then check who owns it — the full check is here. Your first three reports are full reports, free.