{"id":4379,"date":"2026-10-14T17:18:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T21:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.openigloo.com\/?p=4379"},"modified":"2026-10-14T17:18:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T21:18:17","slug":"5-nyc-rental-and-property-history-tools-worth-using","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.openigloo.com\/5-nyc-rental-and-property-history-tools-worth-using","title":{"rendered":"5 NYC rental and property history tools worth using"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Before you sign a lease, it helps to know what happened in a building long before you showed up. The NYC rental and property history tools below pull together renter reviews, violations, eviction filings and ownership records. Here is how we ranked them, what each one does well, and what the data actually tells you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New York City publishes an unusual amount of housing data, but it sits in separate systems that were never built for apartment hunting. A tool earns a spot on this list by making that information usable while you are actually looking at apartments, not three weeks after you have already paid a deposit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We weighed each platform on criteria that matter when you are deciding whether to apply:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The order below reflects those criteria rather than an objective scoring system. Several of these are official city and state records systems, so comparing them head to head with a renter review platform only makes sense in terms of what job you are trying to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each entry covers who it suits, what you will find inside, and where it falls short. Most New Yorkers end up using two or three together: one for the human side of a building, one or two for the official record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Openigloo combines renter reviews with public data<\/a> on New York City buildings, so you can read what current and former renters say about an owner and check the building’s violation and complaint history in the same place. It is the closest thing to a one-stop research step in a rental journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Who Owns What, built by the nonprofit JustFix, links buildings to the business entities behind them using HPD registration records. It answers a question most tools skip: what else does this owner run, and how do those other buildings look?<\/p>\n\n\n\n HPD Online<\/a> is the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s own lookup for residential buildings. When you want the primary source behind a violation count you saw somewhere else, this is where it lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Displacement Alert Project portal, run by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, maps housing data across the city so you can see patterns across a block or neighborhood instead of one building at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ACRIS, the Department of Finance’s Automated City Register Information System, is the public record of property documents. It will not tell you whether the radiator works, but it will tell you who bought the building, when, and with how much debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These records run in two directions. Some of them describe the apartment and the owner, and some of them describe you as an applicant. Knowing which is which keeps you from misreading what you find.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
2. JustFix Who Owns What<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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3. HPD Online<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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4. DAP Portal<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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5. ACRIS<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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What rental history reports, eviction records and tenant screening data actually show<\/h2>\n\n\n\n