Scan the Block · for renting

The building's record, before you sign for a year of it.

A listing shows you the flat on its best day. The District's records show the lot on every other day: every permit issued against it and what the work was, the zoning district each permit carries, and what the blocks around it have reported to the police and to 311. Rents are regulated here under the Rental Housing Act, but the register of which buildings that reaches is not published as data, so this report makes no finding about it.

The questions it answers

What has the Department of Buildings permitted on this lot?
What does an eviction notice here mean?
Has the landlord petitioned to raise rents?
What has been reported wrong with this building?
Who do I call about a repair?
Is this building on the retrofit list?

The sections that earn their keep

What has been permitted on the lotEvery permit the Department of Buildings issued, read across every year the District publishes rather than from one file, with any year that did not answer named rather than dropped.

What the blocks around it reportOffences the Metropolitan Police record and requests made to 311, by year, against what an average District area the same size sees. A request is what somebody said before anyone went to look.

The last 90 daysWhat this block has been like lately, against its own usual.

Licensed for entertainment nearbyWhich places around the address hold a live permit to put on amplified sound, and under which class. You cannot hear a nine o'clock bar at a Tuesday afternoon viewing, and the listing will not mention it.

Work permitted in the street outsideStreet-use permits in force nearby, grouped by job, with the window each runs for — whether the street is being dug up for the six months after you move in.

Before you sign, freeThe lot's card — what the District assesses it at, what it assessed it at last year, and what has been permitted on it — free at /dc/check, shareable with a roommate before either of you signs.

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.

See the plans Try an address

Also written for: buying a home · 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