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SCANTHEBLOCK

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

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.

Written for you

Buying a home in San FranciscoWhat the city's records answer before you write an offer — the retrofit obligation, the tax bill you will actually pay, and the work nobody permitted.Permits, and the work nobody filedHow to read a parcel's permit history, what an open permit costs the next owner, and why the useful signal is often what the record does not contain.Evictions, and what a notice actually meansThe Ellis Act, an owner move-in, a nuisance notice — the city records the ground for every filing, and they do not mean the same thing at all.Earthquakes, ground and hazard zonesSix different things people call “seismic risk”, what each one actually is in San Francisco, and the one this report cannot tell you.

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. 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: 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