What this service is
Scan the Block compiles public records held by the City and County of San Francisco about a parcel and the area around it, and presents them with the city's own figures for comparison. Every number is a count of records a public body published. Nothing is scored, rated, graded or predicted.
What you may not use it for
This is the most important clause on the page, and it is a legal line rather than a preference.
This service is not a consumer reporting agency and its reports are not consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You may not use them, in whole or in part, to establish anyone's eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, housing or tenancy, or for any other purpose covered by that Act.
Screening a tenant with this report is prohibited. Reports describe a place. They are not about a person, and using them as though they were would harm someone and expose you both.
You may not use this service to harass, profile or make decisions about any individual, and you may not scrape, resell or redistribute it as a data feed.
What a report is not
- Not a valuation or an appraisal. Assessed values reflect Proposition 13 and commonly sit far below market.
- Not a statutory Natural Hazard Disclosure. It reports several of the same zones, which is a different thing from being the disclosure a seller owes a buyer.
- Not legal, financial or engineering advice.
- Not a substitute for inspection, title work, or a professional's judgment.
Accuracy
The records come from public systems that are sometimes late, sometimes wrong and sometimes changed after the fact. We reproduce them faithfully and say where they are known to be incomplete; we cannot make them true. Reports are supplied as they are, without warranty of any kind.
Your account
Accounts are opened by us or started as a self-serve trial, and are for one person. Do not share your sign-in link. Plans carry a monthly allowance of newly run reports; re-opening a report you already ran does not count against it. We may suspend an account that is used in breach of these terms.
Liability
To the extent the law allows, our total liability arising from this service is limited to the amount you paid for it in the twelve months before the claim. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including any decision made about a property.
Who you are contracting with
This service is provided by Scan the Block, operated as a sole proprietorship in San Francisco, California. Where these terms say “we”, that is who is meant, and it is who any obligation here runs to.
No separate company stands behind this service today, so the operator is personally the other party to this agreement. That is stated plainly rather than dressed up, because you are entitled to know who you are dealing with.
Who may open an account
You must be at least 18 and able to enter a contract. Accounts are opened by us or started as a self-serve trial, are for one named person, and the sign-in link is not to be shared. A plan covers a stated number of users at one company; adding people beyond that number requires a plan that covers them.
Canceling, and what happens to your month
Every plan is billed monthly or annually, as agreed when the account was set up, and you may cancel at any time. Canceling stops the next renewal; it is not a refund. Your access and your allowance continue to the end of the period you have already paid for — a month or a year — and the plan simply does not renew after that. There is no notice period and no cancellation fee.
We do not refund part-months or pro-rate them, because the allowance is available for the whole of the period and a report you have already run cannot be returned. If something has gone wrong on our side, write to us — we would rather fix it than stand on this paragraph.
An allowance is a ceiling, not a balance. It resets at the turn of the day or the month depending on the plan, and reports you do not use do not carry over into the next period or survive a cancellation. Credits granted to an account are different: those do not expire at the turn of the period.
Reports you have already run stay available while the account is open. Ask before you close it if you want copies; they are yours.
Suspension and closure
We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, in particular the prohibition on tenant screening and other Fair Credit Reporting Act uses. Where the breach is not deliberate we will say what the problem is and give you a chance to stop.
You may close your account at any time by writing to us. We will delete the account and, if you ask, its report history.
Changes to the service and to prices
This service is in early operation and will change. We may add, alter or withdraw parts of it. If a change materially reduces what your plan provides we will tell account holders by email before it takes effect.
Prices may change. An existing subscriber keeps their current price until the end of the period they have paid for, and will be told by email before any new price applies.
Your responsibility for how you use it
You agree to indemnify Scan the Block against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your use of a report in a way these terms prohibit — screening a tenant, making a decision about an individual, or presenting a report as a valuation or a statutory disclosure.
This clause is narrow on purpose. It covers using a report for something it says plainly it is not for, and nothing else.
Sources and attribution
Reports are compiled from public records published by the City and County of San Francisco through DataSF and the Planning Department's public map services. Those bodies publish the underlying data; they do not produce, review or endorse this service, and nothing here should be read as their statement.
A report also carries material from bodies other than the city, each of which is named where its data appears. Several publish under terms that ask for a specific credit, and those are given below in the form asked for. No publisher named here has reviewed or endorsed this service.
- City and County of San Francisco, via DataSF — Most of the report. Published under the DataSF terms of use. The city publishes the data. It does not produce, review or endorse this service.
- SF Planning Department GIS — Zoning, height, historic status and the hazard layers.
- California Geological Survey, California Department of Conservation — Alquist-Priolo earthquake fault zones. A state hazard map. Being outside a zone is not a finding that a parcel is safe.
- U.S. Census Bureau, with Geocod.io for the tract lookup — The census tract and its housing figures.
- National Weather Service, NOAA — Weather warnings in force.
- FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer — The federal flood zone. The layer a lender and an insurer use. It is not the statutory Natural Hazard Disclosure, and it is not the city's own storm mapping.
- California Department of Education, public school directory — Schools near an address. Distance, grade range and who runs each school. Never a rating, a score or a ranking, in any city — school quality is the most common proxy for the characteristics the Fair Housing Act protects. The directory names a principal and this product does not read that column: it describes a place, never a person.
- USGS earthquake catalog — Recorded earthquakes. Events that happened. Not a forecast.
- National Wetlands Inventory, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — Mapped wetlands. A survey at the scale it was flown, not a delineation. Only the Corps of Engineers sets a wetland boundary for a permit.
- Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO), U.S. EPA — Environmental compliance records. A registration is not a hazard, and the agency's own risk screening is not read.
- National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service — Federal historic listings. A federal listing is not a San Francisco Article 10 or 11 designation.
- © OpenStreetMap contributors — The nearest chemist, food shop and clinic. Published under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. A volunteer map, not a register. A shop that closed last month may still be on it.
- 511.org, Metropolitan Transportation Commission — BART, Caltrain and the ferries. Published under the 511.org developer terms.
- EPA AirNow, and PurpleAir for community sensors — Air quality. The EPA does not endorse this service, and neither does PurpleAir. The official index is AirNow's, on its own scale with its own category names; the community readings are individual sensors, uncalibrated and outdoor only.
- NREL PVWatts — What a roof here could produce. The production figure is NREL's model, quoted as it publishes it. The system size fed into it is our own inference and is shown alongside. NREL does not endorse this service and has not reviewed it.
- FCC Broadband Data Collection — Internet availability at the address. Filed by the providers themselves and describes what is offered, not what is installed.
- A third-party listing service — Sale history and a value estimate. Shown with the provider's own range, never restated as ours, and never a valuation.
- RentCast — A single unit's rent estimate, on request. An estimate with its own range. Requested only when a reader asks for one.
- Grok, by xAI — The written summary at the top of a report. Written from the report's own figures. xAI does not see anything about you, and a deterministic summary is used when it is unavailable.
- Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, Los Angeles Police Department; Los Angeles County Office of the Assessor — Most of the report. Read live from the city's open-data portal and the county's own services at the moment a report is run.
- San Diego Police Department, the city's Get It Done service and Development Services Department; the San Diego Association of Governments and the San Diego County Assessor — Most of the report. The parcel half is read live from the region's services at the moment a report is run. The city half is published as files with no query interface, so this product downloads and refreshes a copy, and every count says the day its copy was taken.
- Oakland Police Department, the Oakland Call Center (OAK 311), Oakland's Bureau of Planning; Alameda County Office of the Assessor — Most of the report. Read live from the city's open-data portal and the county's own services at the moment a report is run.
- DC Office of Tax and Revenue, the Department of Buildings, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Office of Unified Communications (311) and the Office of the Chief Technology Officer — Most of the report. Read live at the moment a report is run, from the District's open data. An address is resolved through the Master Address Repository, which carries the quadrant and the square, suffix and lot on one row. Permits, offences and service requests are each published one file per year, so every year in the window is read and any year that did not answer is named.
- NYC Department of Buildings, Housing Preservation and Development, the Department of City Planning, the Department of Finance, the New York City Police Department and 311 — Most of the report. Read live at the moment a report is run, from NYC Open Data. An address is resolved through three of the city's own files: the address register for the building's id, the building footprints to reach the tax lot, and the Department of City Planning's tax roll.
- Cincinnati Police Department, Cincinnati Fire Department, the city's 311 service, Buildings & Inspections; the Hamilton County Auditor and CAGIS — Most of the report. Read live at the moment a report is run — the city's records from its open-data portal, and the parcel from Hamilton County's own CAGIS services.
- City of Cleveland Building & Housing, Division of Police and 311; Cuyahoga County Fiscal Office — Most of the report. Read live from the city's own feature services at the moment a report is run.
Where a source publishes under a license, the license governs that source's data and not this service as a whole. Nothing on this page grants you a license to redistribute the underlying data: these terms let you read and forward a report, and reuse of a publisher's data beyond that is between you and them.
If part of this is unenforceable
If a court sets aside any part of these terms, the rest continue to apply. These terms, together with the acknowledgement you confirm each time you run a report, are the whole agreement between us.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of the State of California, and the courts of San Francisco have jurisdiction.
Contact
Questions about these terms go to hello@scantheblock.com.