Scan the Block · for buying a home

Know the block before it becomes your block.

You are about to make the largest purchase of your life on a street you have walked maybe six times. The city already holds a decade of records on that street — what was filed, cited, permitted and reported around this building — and this report reads all of it in a few seconds, compared with the city so you can tell a number from a normal.

The questions it answers

What is it assessed at, and what was it last year?
What work was permitted, and what was not?
What will my property tax actually be?
Which FEMA flood zone is it in?
What has been permitted on this lot?
What has been filed against this building?

The sections that earn their keep

What will come upOpen permits, retrofit obligations, disclosure triggers — the items that surface in escrow, surfaced before you are in it.

The assessment, and last year'sThe Office of Tax and Revenue publishes this year and the prior year on the same row, so the report shows the direction as well as the level. Rents are regulated in the District but the register is not published, so nothing here makes a finding about a particular unit.

The building's permitsWhat was legally built, what is still open, and the paperwork you would inherit at close.

Crime, by yearCounted within your radius and set against an average area the same size, so a busy corridor reads as what it is.

What the roll records for this lotThe use class, the land area, the tax class, and the sale where the roll carries one. A lot with no transfer recorded is common for government and institutional land and is not the same as never having sold.

What is licensed to make noiseThe places nearby holding a live entertainment permit, and the class the city licensed each under. Six daytime walks past a building will not tell you what nine o'clock sounds like.

Work permitted in the street outsideWhat the city has already agreed can be dug up around the address, and until when — the thing buyers find out the week after they move in.

Written for you

How to read a Washington reportWho keeps which record in the District, why an address here needs a quadrant, and the pair of numbers this city publishes that most cities do not.Why the District asks which quadrant1st Street exists four times over. The quadrant is not decoration on a Washington address, it is part of it, and a report cannot be run without one.This year's assessment, and last year's beside itThe District publishes the current assessment and the prior one on the same row. That pair answers a question a single number cannot.What Washington files, and under what nameThe permit type column does not say what the permit is for. The subtype does, and knowing that is the difference between finding a demolition and finding nothing.

See it on a real address

Run any Washington, D.C. address and the report reads that city's portal live, at the moment you ask. Plans start at $49 a month, billed monthly or annually, and re-reading a report you have run is always free.

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Also written for: renting · owner or landlord · agent or broker · investor · developer or builder · lender or underwriter · insurance · hoa or property management · attorney or other professional · contractor or trade