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How to read a property record, where San Francisco's own rules decide the answer, and what the records will not tell you. Written for whoever is holding the document — a buyer, a renter, an owner, an agent, an investor or developer, an underwriter placing cover or credit, or the board of an association that has just inherited somebody else's deferred maintenance.
How to read a report
Forty-two sections in the order they matter, what each comparison actually claims, and the three places the report is deliberately silent.
about 5 minutes · Aug 2026 For buyersBuying a home in San Francisco
What 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.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For rentersRenting in San Francisco
Whether a building is rent controlled, what its record says about how it is kept, and the difference between the two protections people merge.
about 6 minutes · Aug 2026 For renters and buyersEvictions, and what a notice actually means
The 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.
about 3 minutes · Aug 2026 For buyers, owners and agentsPermits, and the work nobody filed
How 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.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For contractors and tradesWhat to check before you bid
The public record on a building before you send a proposal: what is already open, what an inspector already flagged, and what a soft-story obligation is worth knowing before you price the job.
about 3 minutes · Aug 2026 For owners and landlordsOwning, letting and selling
Your own building's public record, read the way a buyer's agent will read it — and the handful of things worth settling before it is read for you.
about 3 minutes · Aug 2026 For anyone holding a reportWhat this report will not tell you
The refusals are deliberate and worth knowing: no score, no person, no valuation — and the gaps in the records themselves.
about 3 minutes · Aug 2026 For agentsWorking with clients
The questions a client actually asks, the record that answers each, and the sentence to use instead of the one that creates a Fair Housing problem.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For investors and developersInvesting and small development
What is allowed on the parcel, what is approved next to it, and the three obligations that change an underwrite after close.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For anyone in San FranciscoEarthquakes, ground and hazard zones
Six different things people call “seismic risk”, what each one actually is in San Francisco, and the one this report cannot tell you.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For everyoneWho to actually call in San Francisco
This report is a record. These are the people who decide — the Rent Board, DBI, the Assessor, and the organizations that help for free.
about 5 minutes · Aug 2026 ReferenceThe words San Francisco uses
3R, Costa-Hawkins, Maher, blklot, CFC, Tier 4. A reference for the terms that turn up in a report and nowhere else.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For a brokerage deskRunning a desk on public records
How a San Francisco brokerage desk uses one report to answer the questions that otherwise cost a week — and where the city's own rules decide the answer.
about 7 minutes · Aug 2026 For a brokerageProperty records at brokerage scale
Fifty seats, a hundred reports a day, and two machine surfaces. What to automate, what to leave to a person, and how to keep the record defensible.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For insurers and the brokers placing coverInsuring a San Francisco building, from the public record
What the city files about condition and hazard — fire citations, open violations, the retrofit list, the flood and fault zones — and the four things an underwriter needs that are not in there at all.
about 5 minutes · Aug 2026 For lenders and underwritersLending against a San Francisco building
The obligations that transfer with a parcel, the ones with a deadline attached, and why San Francisco publishes no lien, default or foreclosure record at all — which changes what due diligence has to cover.
about 3 minutes · Aug 2026 For HOA boards and property managersCondo boards, HOAs, and the work outstanding
Which buildings the Assessor classes as condominium, what the city has cited them for and never closed, and how an association finds the capital obligations it has inherited before they find it.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026 For developers and buildersGetting a project through in San Francisco
What the parcel allows, what is already approved on the block, and the sequence of public filings a project leaves behind — read as a schedule rather than as a list.
about 3 minutes · Aug 2026 For anyone watching the record dailyWhat San Francisco files every day
The kinds of filing San Francisco publishes against its buildings and storefronts, how far behind each one runs, and why a list built on the filing date misses most of what was filed.
about 4 minutes · Aug 2026Then read the record on an actual address
One San Francisco address, one report: the Assessor's file, permits and violations, zoning, hazards and the published earthquake maps, rent control, and ten years of the surrounding blocks — every count compared with the city, and none of it scored.
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