What's actually in a forensic building audit.

We're building two paid report tiers for the CondosCoopsNYC launch. Level 2 is a 12-page Buyer Brief at $39 for prospective buyers evaluating one specific unit. Level 3 is a 45-65 page Forensic Audit at $149 for board members, plaintiffs, and institutional buyers who need the deep-dive. Both are typeset PDFs in which every claim links back to its government source URL. The sample reports at /reports/sample-l2/ and /reports/sample-l3/ use synthesized data for a fictional building so you can see the structure before launch.

Level 2 — the Buyer Brief.

Nine sections. Built for the buyer who has a specific unit in mind and wants to know what they're walking into. Every section pulls from a single NYC or NY State public dataset and lists the source URL where the original record lives.

Section 1 — Building Snapshot answers "what is this building?" Year built, units, building class, owner of record, sponsor LLC, current managing agent. Sourced from NYC PLUTO + HPD Building Registration + ACRIS deed history. The managing-agent name links to the firm's portfolio page on our site.

Section 2 — HPD Violation History covers ten years of housing-code violations broken down by Class A (non-hazardous), Class B (hazardous), Class C (immediately hazardous), plus a 12-month trailing count and the most common category. Sourced from HPD's Housing Maintenance Code Violations dataset (wvxf-dwi5). Class C is the one to focus on: 50× the weight of Class A in our composite scoring.

Section 3 — DOB Complaints & Active Permits shows open and resolved complaints from the Department of Buildings, plus any active permits with a one-line description of the work. Useful for spotting in-progress capital projects you'll be paying for and for understanding what the board has just authorized.

Section 4 — 311 Patterns covers the five-year history of resident-filed complaints by category. Heat and hot water, noise, water leaks, plumbing. The patterns that surface tell you whether the building has chronic operational issues residents live with day to day but don't necessarily generate violations.

Section 5 — Local Law 11 (Facade) shows the current cycle status, filing date, engineer of record, and any penalties paid. SWARMP, UNSAFE, or SAFE, plus whether deadlines have slipped. The engineer of record carries forward into the L3 conflict-pattern analysis.

Section 6 — Energy Compliance (LL84 / LL87 / LL97) covers the annual LL84 benchmarking filing and ENERGY STAR score, the LL87 Energy Efficiency Report (filed every ten years), and the LL97 carbon penalty risk for 2024 and 2030 compliance periods. LL97 is the one that drives forward-looking cost: penalties of $268 per metric ton over the cap, tightening sharply in 2030.

Section 7 — Tax-Abatement Status identifies any 421-a, J-51, or other tax-incentive program the building participates in and lists the abatement's expiration date. If the abatement has expired or is about to, this section flags the reversion. Buyers should run the math on the 421-a TCB calculator to see what the carrying-cost cliff looks like.

Section 8 — NYSCEF Litigation Count shows the number of active and closed cases naming the board or the building as a party. Plaintiff and defendant counts separately. The case detail itself is reserved for Level 3.

Section 9 — Data Sources Appendix lists every dataset used in the report with the source URL. The promise is reproducibility. Any claim in the report can be independently verified from the listed URL with no API key required.

Level 3 — the Forensic Audit.

Nineteen sections. Includes all nine Level-2 sections, plus ten forensic sections that require additional dataset joins or human research per building. This is the report a board member uses to decide whether to challenge a sponsor's construction defects, the report a plaintiff's attorney uses to anchor a special-assessment dispute, and the report an institutional buyer uses to evaluate whether to take a position in a building.

Section 9 (L3) — AG REFB Offering Plan History. Every amendment to the offering plan since declaration, in chronological order, with the notable items called out (unit-mix changes, sponsor right-of-approval reservations, late-filed disclosures). The Mixed-Income 421-a building section often shows a phase-out disclosure amendment filed a decade after declaration. That is material under any reasonable reading of buyer-protection law.

Section 10 — Sponsor LLC + ACRIS Transfer Chain. The sponsor entity, formation jurisdiction, agent for service, principals as reported by the NY DOS public-inquiry portal (and, post-2026, by the new NY LLC Transparency Act), control-period dates, units retained at handover and now, and the last sponsor unit sale. Sourced from ACRIS + DOS + (if Delaware) the Delaware Secretary of State entity search.

Section 11 — Sponsor Control-Period Timeline. Year-by-year reconstruction from LLC formation through the most recent sponsor activity. Useful for sponsor-defect statute-of-limitations analysis and for showing the timing relationship between control-period decisions and current building problems.

Section 12 — Reserve Fund + Capital Project Ledger. Reserve balance for three years plus a line-item history of capital projects, listing year, project, cost, and funding source. The pattern most reports surface: reserves get rebuilt right after a special assessment, not before. This is where structural under-reserving against the 10-year capital plan becomes visible.

Section 13 — Special Assessment History (10-year). Every assessment with year, dollar amount per unit, total raised, stated purpose, and whether a unit-owner vote was held (almost always: no). The pattern documentation that supports a buyer's reasonable expectation of future assessments.

Section 14 — Tier Carrying Burden (TCB) Modeling. For 421-a buildings, the carrying-cost burden as a percentage of tier-median income during the abatement and after reversion. The methodology powers our public TCB calculator; the per-building version uses the building's actual unit mix and tier composition.

Sections 15-17 — Compliance / Insurance / Engineer + Counsel Pattern. Boiler, elevator, and facade compliance detail; D&O and liability insurance summary; engineer-of-record and board counsel identification with portfolio-level patterns (does this engineer always refer the same contractor; how much of the building's budget is going to legal). These three sections are where the L2's surface-level snapshot becomes a forensic picture.

Section 18 — NYSCEF Docket Pulls. Per-case detail for every litigation: case caption, role, filed date, status, subject. The Level 2 count becomes a usable case list.

Section 19 — Data Sources Appendix. 20+ datasets cited, every URL clickable.

What we don't put in the reports.

We don't name individual unit owners as "bad actors." We don't include speculation about board members' personal motivations. We don't include unverified third-party allegations. We don't include data from paid datasets or private subscriptions. Every source is public, every claim is reproducible, every URL is clickable. We don't make recommendations on whether to buy or sell; that's the buyer's or board's decision. We surface the data and the patterns; you draw the conclusion.

When the reports launch.

Soon. We've completed the bulk-generation pipeline for the first 1,259 buildings (roughly 9% of the NYC condo + co-op universe). What remains is the company formation and payment infrastructure. Until then, the sample reports at /reports/sample-l2/ and /reports/sample-l3/ show the structure exactly as it will arrive when paid reports go live. Email us if you want a specific building prioritized in the launch batch.

Related: Reports overview · Methodology page · Data & API — what's free vs paid.