How do I find out who owns a property in NYC?

Property ownership in NYC is a public record by statute. Every deed transfer is recorded with the NYC Department of Finance in ACRIS, and every residential rental building of three or more units is required to file an annual HPD registration naming the head officer, corporate owner, or individual owner accountable for the property. Either record can be searched by anyone, free of charge — but each tells a different part of the story, and serious due-diligence workflows use both.

ACRIS shows the legal buyer of record on each deed. NYC HPD shows the named individual or corporate entity accountable for housing-code compliance, which can differ from the deed-named buyer when a property is held through an LLC. NYC PLUTO — the City Planning Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output — provides the building's physical attributes (year built, lot area, units, building class), keyed by the same BBL identifier. The three together produce a complete public-record picture: who owns it (ACRIS), who is accountable (HPD), and what it is (PLUTO).

Two limitations of the official sources matter for any real-world lookup. First, when a property is held in an LLC, ACRIS shows the LLC name as the buyer — not the human controlling the LLC. Second, ACRIS data lags real-world activity by 30 to 60 days from recording, and the parallel NYC Open Data export refreshes monthly. For freshness-sensitive work, ACRIS's own web search runs closer to real-time but is rate-limited and not designed for programmatic access.

Step 1: Find the BBL

Every NYC tax lot has a 10-digit Borough-Block-Lot identifier. NYC DOF's property tax search at https://a836-pts-access.nyc.gov accepts an address or a BBL and returns the parcel record. NYC City Planning's ZoLa map at https://zola.planning.nyc.gov is the visual equivalent — click any parcel on the map and the BBL appears in the side panel. Once you have the BBL, the rest of the public record opens up.

Step 2: Search ACRIS by BBL or party name

At https://a836-acris.nyc.gov, pick "Property Records" and search by BBL or by party name. Document images download as PDFs at no cost. Sort by recorded date descending; the most recent deed shows the current buyer of record. ACRIS displays both the document date (when the underlying transaction was signed) and the recorded date (when it was filed at NYC Finance) — they can differ by months, so anchor on recorded date for "current owner" questions.

Step 3: When the buyer is an LLC, follow the chain

New York State does not require LLC ownership disclosure on its public corporation records. So an ACRIS deed showing "12 Main Street LLC" as the buyer doesn't tell you who controls the LLC. Three workarounds: (a) cross-reference NYC HPD registration for the same building — when the property is HPD-registered, the head officer and corporate-owner names are public; (b) examine the LLC's NYS Department of State filing, which lists the registered agent and registered office address; (c) check whether other properties have transferred to LLCs at the same registered agent address — that's how shell-cluster ownership patterns surface. We cover the LLC-specific lookup in detail on a separate page.

What MetroDeeds adds on top

MetroDeeds joins ACRIS deeds, NYC HPD registrations, NYS Department of State entity records, and NYC DOF assessments into a single property-and-operator profile. On the public Landlord Ripoff Watch, every operator profile shows the named individual's confirmed building list, total open HPD violations broken out by Class A, B, and C, recent ACRIS deeds for portfolio properties, eviction execution rate, and shell-cluster detection when an operator's LLCs map back to a single registered agent address. All of that is free and public — no login required.

Pro and Scout+ users can also search the MetroDeeds deed feed by buyer or seller name across the past five years of NYC sales, see full party names on every deed, and pull a one-page property report with last-sale, mortgage, owner-of-record, and HPD violation count for any BBL. Anonymous and free-tier users see the deed feed with party names redacted.

• How do I find out who owns an LLC in NYC?— answer
• What is ACRIS?— answer
• How do I look up HPD violations by address?— answer
• ACRIS— glossary
• BBL (Borough-Block-Lot)— glossary
• Browse the MetroDeeds deed feed↗
• Open Landlord Intel by BBL↗