JustFix Who Owns What is a free, open-source LLC ownership mapping tool built and maintained by tenant organizers. If you are a tenant or housing advocate, JustFix is the right starting point. MetroDeeds adds the layers professional researchers need: daily ACRIS deed transfers, eviction filings, distress scoring, and downloadable due-diligence reports.
Feature parity on the dimensions that matter for NYC property research.
JustFix Who Owns What is built by JustFix, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Source: github.com/JustFixNYC/who-owns-what.
JustFix Who Owns What is one of the most important free public-interest tools in NYC housing. It is free, open-source under GPLv3, and built and maintained by tenant organizers at JustFix — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit civic-tech organization. If you are a tenant trying to understand who actually owns your building, an organizer mapping a landlord’s network for a tenant-association campaign, or a journalist tracing shell companies, JustFix is the right starting point. It is not a teaser for a paid tier. It is a public good.
The core innovation — using HPD Registration corporate disclosures to map LLC ownership networks across NYC — is fundamentally good civic-tech work, and the methodology has been validated repeatedly in tenant-organizing campaigns and investigative reporting. Their database covers roughly 160,000 NYC properties with cross-property ownership connections, financial leveraging analysis, and a free interface that loads fast and gets out of your way.
For users without budget — tenants, organizers, students, freelance journalists on small assignments, advocacy nonprofits — JustFix is genuinely free in the way that matters: no paywall, no upsell, no enterprise tier where the "real" features hide. Use it.
If your work is fundamentally about tenant-advocacy outcomes — housing court support, organizing campaigns, public-interest reporting on landlord networks — JustFix’s mission and your mission are aligned in a way a for-profit platform’s never can be. That alignment matters when you are picking a research tool whose framing will shape your output.
JustFix and MetroDeeds work from overlapping NYC datasets but build different products on top. JustFix is built for tenant-advocacy use; MetroDeeds is built for property-research professionals — brokers, investors, lenders, due-diligence teams, and journalists doing investigative work that requires current data, structured outputs, and transactional context.
Specific layers MetroDeeds adds:
If you are a tenant looking up your own building, a tenant organizer running a campaign, or a community group with no software budget, use JustFix. It is free, the team behind it is on your side, and the LLC network mapping is reliable. There is no scenario where paying $29.99 to $499.99 per month for MetroDeeds outperforms JustFix’s free tool when JustFix’s tool answers your question.
If your priority is methodological transparency — being able to read the source code, the data pipelines, and the LLC-detection algorithms — JustFix’s open-source codebase on GitHub is auditable in a way MetroDeeds’ proprietary stack is not.
If you are publishing research that depends on linking back to a free, accessible tool your readers can use to verify claims for themselves, JustFix is the right tool to cite. The free, public link is the link your audience can actually click without hitting a paywall.
If you use JustFix and find it valuable, donate. The nonprofit funds the tool, and the tool stays free. We say this on a competitor comparison page because it is true and because tools like Who Owns What only exist when the people who use them support the people who build them.
JustFix Who Owns What is free. It accepts donations to support the nonprofit; if you use it, donate. There is no paid tier, no upsell, no feature gating.
MetroDeeds publishes its prices on the pricing page. The Free tier covers most casual research needs at zero dollars per month — all five boroughs, 180-day deed feed, three lifetime PDF reports. Scout starts at $29.99 per month for one borough and a 365-day window. Scout+ at $49.99 per month adds all five boroughs and a five-year history with truncated names and dollar-per-square-foot data. Pro at $149.99 per month unlocks full operator names, downloadable PDF reports, in-contract (CTOR) alerts, and Landlord Intel features. Enterprise at $499.99 per month adds API access and five seats.
The decision is not "which platform is cheaper" — JustFix is cheaper at every tier. The decision is whether the layers MetroDeeds adds — daily deed feed, CTOR, eviction filings, daily distress score, downloadable reports, API — are worth the subscription for your workflow. For tenants and organizers, the answer is no. For brokers, investors, and DD teams, the answer is usually yes.
Free, Scout, Scout+, Pro, Enterprise — every tier publicly priced. No sales call required.