A Housing Connect listing tells you the rent, the income bands, the apartment size, and how many units are in the lottery. It shows a rendering or a photograph. What it does not tell you is how the building is actually run.
That gap matters most at the moment you have the least time. When your log number comes up, you get a window to respond, gather documents, and decide — the deadline is stated in your notice. It is a bad moment to start learning that the building has open heat violations going back two winters.
Most of what follows is public record. You can look it up yourself, by address, without asking anyone's permission — including here. The last section is different: it is what to ask once you are in the room.
In this guide
- First ask whether the building has a history at all
- Open HPD violations, and specifically their class
- Complaints, which are not the same as violations
- Heat and hot water, on their own
- Open DOB permits
- Whether the building is registered as rent-stabilized
- Executed evictions
- What a clean record does and does not mean
- What to ask when you get to the appointment
1. First ask whether the building has a history at all {#history}
Many lottery apartments are in buildings finished within the last year or two. A very new building will have little or no accumulated record — not because it is well run, but because there has not been time to build one.
So start with the year the building was built. If it went up recently, most of what follows will come back empty, and that emptiness tells you nothing either way. For a new building, the useful checks are the permit history and who the owner is — the same landlord may run older buildings whose records are not empty.
If the building is older, everything below applies.
2. Open HPD violations, and specifically their class {#violations}
HPD sorts housing-code violations by severity, and the class is the whole story:
- Class A — non-hazardous.
- Class B — hazardous. Things like broken self-closing doors, inadequate lighting, some plumbing defects.
- Class C — immediately hazardous. No heat, no hot water, lead paint, mold, rodents, defective window guards.
Open violations are the ones that have not been certified as corrected — not the total, which includes everything ever closed. One old Class A carries very different weight from an open Class C, which is a condition the city has already found hazardous and the landlord has not resolved.
The ratio matters as much as the count. A hundred-unit building with four open violations is in a different condition from a six-unit building with four.
3. Complaints, which are not the same as violations {#complaints}
A complaint is usually a tenant reporting a condition. A violation is a condition an HPD inspector found and recorded. Complaints often lead to inspections, but HPD also inspects on its own schedule, so the two are related without being the same thing.
That is why reading them together tells you more than either alone. Many complaints and few violations can mean conditions were fixed before inspection — or that inspections kept missing them. Few complaints can mean tenants who go straight to the landlord, or tenants who have stopped bothering.
Look at the subjects, not just the counts. Heat and hot water complaints clustered in January say something specific about the coming winter.
4. Heat and hot water, on their own {#heat}
If you look at one category, make it this one. Heat and hot water are among the most common housing complaints in the city, and heat season runs from October 1 through May 31.
A pattern that repeats across several winters is worth taking seriously. One bad month can be a broken part; several bad winters is a building that has not solved the problem. The record will not tell you why — that is a question for the appointment.
5. Open DOB permits {#permits}
Department of Buildings records show what work has been filed and what is still open.
An open permit does not mean construction is happening right now, or that it would happen anywhere near your apartment. It means work was filed and has not been signed off. Permits open for years without progress are worth asking about, and so is a permit for major work about to begin. A building being repaired is also a building being maintained — this is a question to ask, not a mark against the address.
6. Whether the building is registered as rent-stabilized {#stabilization}
Many lottery units sit in buildings receiving a tax exemption — 421-a, J-51, 485-x and others — and those programs commonly require rent stabilization for the term of the benefit. The specific terms vary by program, by building and by the regulatory agreement, so treat this as a question to settle rather than a conclusion to draw.
Here is the part that trips people up. DHCR registration data contains two separate things: whether the building is registered at all, and how many units are registered as stabilized. A missing unit count is not the same as the building being market-rate. Registrations get filed late, filed incompletely, or not filed at all.
So if you find nothing, do not conclude anything. Ask the landlord directly whether the unit is rent-stabilized, and request your own rent history from DHCR — you are entitled to it, and it is the document that settles the question.
7. Executed evictions {#evictions}
Evictions carried out by a city marshal are recorded. Note what that is not: it is not the number of eviction cases filed in housing court. Far more cases are filed than are ever carried out, and the two counts answer different questions.
A building with repeated executed evictions is worth a closer look. The record does not say what the disputes were about or who was right, and evictions happen for many reasons. Weigh it alongside everything else rather than on its own.
What a clean record does and does not mean {#clean}
A building with no open violations has a clean record with the city. That is real information and it is worth having.
It is not a guarantee of upkeep. It means no inspector has found and recorded an unresolved hazardous condition. It does not mean the elevator works reliably, the super answers, or the laundry room is open. Public records catch what gets reported and inspected, and plenty never does.
Use the record to find the buildings worth asking harder questions about. Do not use it to stop asking.
What to ask when you get to the appointment {#ask}
Bring what you found. These are reasonable questions, and the answers tell you as much as the records do:
- If there are open violations: what is being done about them, and when.
- If there is a heat complaint pattern: how old the boiler is and when it was last serviced or replaced.
- If there are open permits: what the work is and when it finishes.
- On stabilization: is this specific unit rent-stabilized, and can you see the legal regulated rent and the lease history.
- And the one question that is in no record at all: how long has the current super been there.
A landlord who answers these directly is telling you something. So is one who will not.
Weverit is independent and tenant-side. We have no broker affiliations and we do not take listings. Every figure on our building pages comes from New York City and State public records, and every page names its source.
