What should we send you?
Your plan includes the daily filing lists, and you have not chosen any yet. Los Angeles publishes these every weekday — pick the ones worth your morning. You can change this whenever you like under Notifications, and nothing is ever sent that you have not asked for.
Picks a sensible set to start from. Change anything below before you save.
Los Angeles property intelligence
Know the block
before it becomes
your block.
The city already knows this building — its permits, the code-enforcement cases still open against it, the eviction notices recorded on it, how it is zoned, the police record on its block, what the EPA holds on record around it, and what is being built next door. Thirty-five sections in seconds, every count compared with the city, as a PDF you can forward. 100% coverage of Los Angeles, every address, today.
Matched to the right plan and price — or told honestly that the free check is all you need.
Read a full sample report → every section, a real address, the actual PDF
The corpus behind every report
One record, every reader
The two sides of a sale read it most closely — and four more read it their own way.
If you sell property
You get asked what the block is like
And answering it in your own words is the part of the job with the most downside. A report you forward is records with the caveats attached, so the characterization is the city's and not yours.
- Know what the county has on the building, and what the city holds open against it, before you write an offer.Los Angeles publishes no point-of-sale report of its own. What it does publish is the county's assessed value across five roll years — a staircase under Proposition 13 that resets the day a deed records — and every code-enforcement case LADBS holds open against the parcel. This reads both, beside ten years of what the city filed on the blocks around it.
- Walk in already knowing the rest.What the city has filed on these streets — permits and police reports, by year
- Hand it over instead of characterizing. Nothing is scored, no school is rated, and the census section describes buildings rather than the people in them. That is a deliberate design decision about your exposure, not an omission.
- One account for the desk. Plans carry seats and share an allowance, and the owner of the plan can see every report run against it, and by whom.
If you are buying
You get one look before you commit
An open house tells you about the kitchen. The expensive surprises are on the block and in the building's file, and most of them are a matter of public record if you know which record to ask for.
- The obligations that come with it.An open code-enforcement case transfers with the building. LADBS keeps cases marked open until they are resolved, and the report shows every one it holds against the parcel, by type, with the count and date of the ones it has closed.
- What your tax bill will actually be.Los Angeles County's assessed value for the parcel and the date it last recorded a transfer are both in the report, across five roll years. Under Proposition 13 the value is anchored to the last sale and rises at most about two per cent a year, so the run of years is a staircase, and a jump in it is a sale.
- Ten years of the surrounding blocks. Police reports and permits, each set against what an average area of the same size in Los Angeles records — so a number means something. — so a number means something.
- The flood map a lender uses. The federal zone and the panel it came off, quoted as FEMA publishes it. The city publishes no storm or sea-level layer of its own, so this report carries the federal map and says so rather than implying more.
And four more, reading the same record their own way
Renting a place
Los Angeles has rent stabilization in law, and the city publishes no register of covered units this report can read, so it does not pretend to test for it. What it does have is ten years of what the city filed on these streets — permits and police reports — against the citywide rate, and every code-enforcement case the city holds open on the building.
Owning or managing buildings
Your own building's open code-enforcement cases and how many the city has closed, its permit history, and the county's assessed value across five roll years — the staircase Proposition 13 builds, and where it breaks.
Investing and developing
The pipeline of what is proposed, approved and under construction nearby, zoning and height limits, and the gap between assessed and market value.
Advising and arguing
The parcel’s full permit, violation and eviction record with the date each line was read — attorneys pull one report per matter and export the history.
Neither version is a valuation, an appraisal, or a statutory Natural Hazard Disclosure, and no version may be used to screen a tenant. What it is, in both cases, is the public record on one address, gathered in one place.
Not sure what it tells you?
Say what brings you here and the assistant will say what the report holds for it — then answer whatever you want to ask.
First — which of these is you?
The assistant answers about this product and what Los Angeles's records can show. It has no property in front of it, so it will not look an address up, price anything, or say what an area is like — running a report is what does that.
What a report contains
Thirty-five sections. Zero opinions.
Every line beneath is real output for 1111 S Broadway.
Every building, not the same report
What the records hold depends on what it is.
A house
The fullest version. The county's record of the parcel — assessed value across five roll years, use, floor area, the year it was built, the last recorded transfer — every permit LADBS has filed on it since 2020, every code-enforcement case the city holds against it, its zoning and overlays, and ten years of police and permits on the blocks around it, each against the citywide rate.
A flat or condominium
The same area record as a house. The association's own file — its name, the fee, who runs it — is not a public record this report reads, so it says so rather than leaving a blank.
An apartment building
The one that costs money leads: every code-enforcement case LADBS holds open against the building, by type, and the count and date of the ones it has closed. Cases run with the building rather than with whoever owns it today.
A shop, office or warehouse
Every area record still applies: permits and police by year, the flood zone and the quake record, and ten years of the block around it.
Coverage is uneven because the records are, and where a section is thin the report says which record is thin rather than showing an empty space. Los Angeles addresses only, whatever the building is.
Built to be believed
Three rules the report keeps, and under each one the thing itself: real output for 1111 S Broadway, unedited. A count, a refusal, and a number with the caveat that makes it safe to use.
Every number is compared
A count on its own is unreadable. Nobody can say whether 1,195 is a lot, so every figure is set against what an average area of the same size in Los Angeles records.
11.1× the Los Angeles average
An average area this size holds 107, and this works out at about 10 a week.
Nothing is scored
No safety grade, no risk number, no letter for the block. Those are opinions wearing a number's clothes, on a page that can move a price that matters — and for a brokerage they are a liability: area scores and school grades are the classic proxies for what the Fair Housing Act protects. A report with neither is one your agents can forward without a compliance read.
- Safety score
- Risk rating
- Neighborhood grade
- Investment outlook
You get the records and the comparison. Drawing the conclusion is your job, and saying so is what keeps it yours.
The caveats travel with the numbers
A complaint is not a finding. Police locations are published to the hundredth block. An assessment is not a valuation — and that last one is worth real money, so it sits against the figure it qualifies rather than in a footer nobody reads.
An assessment is not a valuation. Under Proposition 13 this is the 2018 purchase price adjusted by at most about two per cent a year, and it has been anchored for 8 years — so it may sit far below what the property would fetch. The county publishes no lot size for the parcel, and the report leaves that blank rather than inferring it.
What Los Angeles filed today
Trade's Notifications tab offers exactly six of these. Office and up choose freely from all fifteen. Either way, 6:30am.
Every weekday the city records buildings being emptied, work being permitted, and inspectors finding things. Most of it is never read by anyone who would act on it. These are those filings, sorted into lists, delivered each morning — one filing type per list, in the order they were filed, never ranked and never an owner’s name.
15 lists, and you choose which arrive.
Buildings coming empty
The filings that precede a sale or a vacancy.
- Major work issuedAny permit issued with a declared valuation over $250,000. Somebody is spending serious money on that building.
- Buildings completedCertificates of occupancy issued: the work passed and the building may be used. New homes coming to market, and the contractor's job ending.
- New homes completedCertificates of occupancy on new buildings with at least one dwelling unit — the homes that actually opened, as against the permits that promised them.
- Vacant buildings ordered abatedBuildings LADBS has ordered secured or abated as vacant. Board-up and demolition work for a contractor; a distressed building for a buyer. A place, never a person.
What is being built
Demolition, new construction and serious money.
- New buildings issuedPermits issued to erect a new building. Cranes, lifts and generators; the valuation is the applicant's own figure.
- Demolition issuedPermits issued to take a structure down. Excavators, breakers and a dumpster follow.
- Additions issuedPermits issued to add to an existing building — the second storey, the rear unit, the ADU.
- Grading issuedEarthwork permits. Machine work by definition, and it happens at the start of a job.
- Pools and spas issuedSwimming pool and spa permits — excavation, plumbing and a crane for the shell.
- Electrical permits issuedEvery electrical permit LADBS issued: rewiring, panels, solar and EV charging. The trade's own feed, keyed on the day the permit was issued.
- Solar permits issuedElectrical permits the department flags as solar. Roof work follows, and a meter.
- Plumbing permits issuedEvery plumbing permit LADBS issued: re-pipes, water heaters, sewer lines, gas.
- HVAC permits issuedHeating and air-conditioning permits: the replacement season, one address at a time.
- Fire-sprinkler permits issuedFire-sprinkler permits issued by LADBS, the work the fire code demands before a building opens.
- Elevator permits issuedElevator and lift permits: new installations and the modernisations a building's age eventually forces.
The city publishes on a lag — two days for permits and violations, nearer a fortnight for buyouts — and every row shows the date it was filed rather than the day it reached us. This is nothing on my patch gets past me, not first to the door, and we would rather say so than let you find out.
Scan the Block <hello@scantheblock.com> · 6:30 AM
32 new filings, 2 on more than one list
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Scan the Block <hello@scantheblock.com> · 6:30 AM
24 new filings, 1 on more than one list
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What comes with it
Every plan, unless marked.
Plans
Every plan is billed monthly or annually — your choice — and can be canceled at any time — canceling stops the next renewal and keeps your access to the end of the period you have paid for; we do not pro-rate or refund part of a month. An allowance is a ceiling rather than a balance: it resets at the turn of the day or month, and unused reports do not carry over. A report counts against it only when it is newly run — re-reading one you already ran is free, always.
The guides are free to read whether or not you have an account — how to read a property record, what the city’s rules actually turn on, and what the records will not tell you, written separately for buying, renting, owning, agency and investment.
Open 24/7 Start the week of Pro yourself at the sign-in form — sixty seconds, no card. Pricing bids, not buying? Trade is $19/mo, no trial needed — see the card below. Teams and multi-seat plans: email hello@scantheblock.com and we set you up by hand. Email us →Plans with more than one account use the company’s own email domain — personal addresses (gmail and the like) fit the single-account plans.
Office and above include machine access over MCP, so Claude can run the account’s reports: switched on per seat, off by default, under the same allowance as the buttons. Claude is a product of Anthropic, PBC; Scan the Block is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.
How this compares — against the city’s own free tool, NeighborhoodScout and PropertyShark, feature by feature, from each product’s own materials — including where they win.
See the comparisonThe data, seams and all
Where the city changed how it records something, the report says so next to the number rather than in a footnote. Three examples: LAPD adopted a new records system in 2024, so the report counts the two separately rather than inventing a trend across the seam. It publishes location to the hundredth block and no map point, so its area count is a box the width of the radius rather than a circle, and the section says so. And the county assessment roll keys on a parcel number the city does not use, so the report reaches it by asking the county's own parcel map which polygon the address sits in.
The spine is public records — the City of Los Angeles's own open-data portal for police incidents, permits and code enforcement, and the county assessor's services for the roll and the parcel map — read live at the moment you ask. Alongside them sit a few third-party estimates: a property’s market value, a unit’s likely rent. Each is shown with its own range, named for the service that made it, and never presented as ours or turned into a score. We keep no copy of the city’s data — only your own receipt, which you can see and export.
Asked of the city just now, not stored here. Each dataset is published on its own rhythm, so a gap is the city's publishing lag rather than a gap in the report — and the report says so where it matters.
| Dataset | From | Rows |
|---|---|---|
| Police incident reports (NIBRS, current system) | 2024 | 463,580 |
| Police incident reports (2020 to mid-2024) | 2020 | 1,004,894 |
| Building permits (LADBS), three files | 1988 | 1,582,928 |
| Electrical permits (LADBS) | 2020 | 357,588 |
| Mechanical permits (LADBS): plumbing, HVAC, sprinklers, elevators | 2020 | 295,432 |
| Inspections (LADBS) | 2013 | 11,691,152 |
| Permit applications (LADBS) | 2020 | 303,617 |
| Traffic collisions (LAPD), to March 2025 | 2010 | 621,677 |
| Right-of-way permits (Bureau of Engineering) | 1987 | 635,853 |
| Parking citations (LADOT) | 2016 | 21,009,502 with a location |
| Metered parking inventory (LADOT) | — | one row per space |
| Affordable housing projects (LAHD) | 2003 | 616 |
| Rent-stabilization case analyses (LAHD) | 2013 | 11,245 |
| Certificates of occupancy (LADBS) | 2020 | 132,426 |
| Vacant-building abatement orders (LADBS) | 1995 | 760 |
| Code-enforcement cases, open | 2004 | 28,822 |
| Code-enforcement cases, closed | 1979 | 823,935 |
| Address register | — | 1,045,070 |
| County assessment roll | 2021 | 5 roll years |
And eight from outside the city, each named where it appears:
| Source | From | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Census Bureau | ACS | The tract and its housing figures |
| FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer | FEMA | The flood zone a lender uses |
| USGS earthquake catalog | 1900 | Quakes that actually happened |
| National Register of Historic Places | NPS | Federal historic listings |
| OpenStreetMap | volunteer | The nearest chemist or food shop |
| EPA AirNow and PurpleAir | EPA | Air quality, official and community |
| NREL PVWatts | NREL | What a roof here could generate |
| FCC broadband filings | FCC | Internet available at the address |
Read up first
Free, no account. A different three each day.
One city, on purpose
A national property site knows a little about everywhere. This knows Los Angeles, and most of what makes a report useful here does not exist anywhere else.
The things that only exist here
An assessment anchored to the last sale by Proposition 13, with the roll years shown so the staircase and its breaks are visible. Code enforcement as an open-and-closed register per parcel, keyed on the city's own parcel number. Police reports published to the hundredth block, on the NIBRS system since 2024 and the archive before it, never added across the seam. A permit feed keyed on the issue date.
Read from the city's own registers
The address comes from the city's own address register, the counts from its open-data portal, and the zoning, parks and rail from its own map services — live, at the moment you ask. The roll and the parcel map come from Los Angeles County's own services, the bus stops from Metro's. Not a national aggregator, and not a scrape.
Then the next city
The method is the product: find the registers a city actually keeps, learn where they disagree with each other, and say so beside the numbers. That travels. The particular datasets do not, so the next city gets the same treatment from scratch rather than this one stretched to fit it.
Los Angeles addresses only, today. If you want to know when somewhere else opens, write to hello@scantheblock.com and we will tell you rather than guess at a date here.
Sign in
One link, straight to your inbox. No password to choose, forget or leak.
A week of Pro to start — sixty seconds, no card. Start it at the sign-in form; annual billing is two months free, every year.
Your history
Every report you have run, and every sign-in on this account. Re-opening a report is free and does not count against your allowance.
Claude access
Connect it to Claude
Or call it yourself
Report
Get access
We set accounts up by hand. Send this and we’ll email you an invoice and your sign-in link — your first week of Pro is free, and annual billing is two months free, every year.
Sent. We’ll reply from hello@scantheblock.com with an invoice and your sign-in link — usually the same day.
Is Scan the Block for you?
Keyboard shortcuts
Shortcuts stay out of the way while you are typing in any field.
Compiling your report
—
A fresh address takes a few seconds. Re-opening one you have run is instant.
Lists
Public filings, gathered daily. Each list is one filing type, newest first.
A different kind of list — screened live, not a subscription
Signals
Long-anchored multi-family parcels in one neighborhood, with open notices of violation joined in. Three public facts side by side; what they mean together is your judgment, and nothing here is ranked for you.
Notifications
Choose what arrives in your inbox. Nothing is sent that you have not asked for.
Picks a sensible set to start from. Change anything you like below — nothing is sent until you press Save.
When these arrive. 6:30am Pacific, weekdays only — these are city filings, so nothing is recorded at weekends. You are sent an email only when one of your lists has something new in it; an empty message every morning is how people learn to stop opening them.
How current they are.police reports run about four days behind, and permits about a weekfiled, which is not the day it reached us — so treat these as “nothing on my patch gets past me” rather than “first to the door”.
Leads
The working prospect list — statuses and notes save as you go. Several of us work this same list.
Loading the leads…
Team
Sources
Live state of every upstream, measured from real report traffic rather than synthetic checks.
A source shown idle has no recent traffic to judge by — that is not a fault.
Companies
A plan is sold to a company. Seats are how many people it covers; the monthly reports are a single pool they share. Billing happens outside this service. A Claude mark on an account means that person has switched on machine access for it — Scan the Block is independent of Anthropic, and the mark records their choice, not an affiliation.
Usage & cost
What the report's paid sources actually cost this month, counted from calls that really went out — a cache hit costs nothing and is not counted. The city's own data is free and is shown for context only. Estimates use current list rates; billing is settled with each provider.
Reading…