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

Is this building rent controlled?
What work was permitted, and what was not?
What will my property tax actually be?
Is it in a flood or liquefaction zone?
Does it need a soft-story retrofit?
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.

Rent controlA date test with two protections, decided from the roll and explained — the finding buyers most often get half right.

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 changed hands nearbyRecent transfers on the block from the Assessor's roll, with an honest account of what the dollar figure means.

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.

See it on a real address

The front page runs on live output for 820 Post St — every number on it is the report's own. Every report is free, and there is nothing to sign up for.

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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