Data sources and methodology
How the leads are made.
What the directory is built from, how a city record becomes a lead, what the flags and labels mean, and where the data stops. A building signal is a prospecting opportunity drawn from a public record, not an inbound request from an owner.
Data sources
Every lead comes from a New York City public record. These are the agencies whose records we load:
| Agency | Records |
|---|---|
| Department of Buildings (DOB) | Violations, safety violations, complaints, job filings, permits (including sidewalk sheds), certificates of occupancy, stalled construction sites, facade (FISP) filings, boiler and elevator inspections, parking structure (LL126) filings, energy benchmarking (LL84) |
| Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) | ECB violations: summonses heard at OATH, with hearing dates, penalties and balances due |
| Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) | Housing code violations, tenant complaints, repair and vacate orders, building registrations with their managing agents and contacts |
| Department of Finance (DOF) | Property sales and the owners of record on the tax roll |
| Department of City Planning | Building facts by tax lot: building class, units, floors and year built |
Each lead carries the city’s own record number (the job, violation or permit number), so you can look the record up with the agency that issued it before you rely on it. The indicator catalogue describes each record type.
Refresh
We load the records once a day, and the directory updates early in the morning, New York time, in time for the 6am shortlist. Last successful update: . A record usually appears the morning after the city publishes it. When a city source is late or unavailable, its new records wait for the next run; every page shows when the directory last updated.
How records are matched to trades
Each record type maps to the trade divisions it means work for: an HPD heat complaint goes to HVAC, a facade filing to facade and exterior restoration. Within a type, the record’s own text (the violation description, the complaint’s problem, the permit’s work type) decides between divisions, and one record can belong to several: a leak can be a plumbing lead and a mold lead. A seat shows the leads whose divisions it covers in its borough.
How “unworked” is worked out
A lead is flagged unworked when the record is still open and we found no matching later permit or job filing at the same building for the same kind of work. When we find one, the lead is marked handled and shows which filing matched, so you can see it before deciding whether to pursue the opportunity.
“Unworked” is a record-matching signal, not confirmation that the owner is seeking bids or has not hired a contractor. Work can start without a filing we can match, a filing can be late, and the owner may already have a contractor.
How leads are ranked
Every open lead gets a score from 0 to 100 from its deadline, how serious the condition is, the open penalty balance, the job value in the filing, how recent the record is and how reachable the owner is. Unworked leads rank above handled ones. The labels are bands of that score across all open leads, recalculated with each load: Hot is about the top 10%, Strong the next 20%, Worth a look the next 40% and Low the rest. Each lead lists the facts behind its label. Your own call-sheet wins raise similar leads in your ranking only.
Owners and the confidence rating
The owner of record comes from the city’s property records. Its confidence rating says how well those records agree: high when they name the same owner, medium or low when they differ or one is missing. The managing agent comes from HPD building registrations, which cover registered residential buildings only; many buildings have none.
How complete contact details are
Contact details are only as complete as the public records. Phone numbers come from public filings; an owner phone from a filing more than 10 years old is left out, and one from 3 to 10 years ago is labelled dated.
As of the last update, the directory holds buildings. Of those, have an owner or managing-agent contact on file and have a phone number.
The share of buildings with a contact and with a phone number on file shows here, with the date it was measured, when the live numbers load.
Deadlines, penalties and job values
Dates are the ones in the city’s record: the cure-by date, the hearing date or the due date. Penalty balances are the open ECB balance; job values are the estimated cost in the filing. They are summaries of the record and can differ from the agency’s current file. Nothing on the site is legal, engineering or code-compliance advice.
Corrections
- A wrong city record is corrected by the agency that keeps it; our next load picks the change up.
- A wrong match (the wrong building, owner or trade): email [email protected] with “Correction” in the subject.
- Your own contact details: if you appear in the directory, you can ask us to correct or suppress them: email [email protected] with “Correction” or “Suppression” in the subject. We act on requests generally within 30 days, and a suppressed contact shows “Contact removed at the owner’s request”. See the Privacy Policy.
Who runs Unworked Leads
Unworked Leads is operated by UNWORKED LEADS LLC, a Florida limited liability company. Contact: [email protected].
Unworked Leads is an independent business. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for the City of New York or any of its agencies. Agency names appear only to describe where records come from. Unworked Leads is not a consumer reporting agency; the data must not be used for credit, employment, insurance, housing or tenant-screening decisions (Terms of Service).
See what a lead looks like.
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