Methodology

Umarelli reads public records from New York City and Jersey City and applies the rules below. If something looks wrong, email corrections@umarelli.org with the page and what’s off. Where each record comes from, and how fresh it is, is on the sources page.

New York building permits

  • Job filings in DOB NOW since March 2021, plus new-building jobs still filed in the older BIS system after that date. A BIS job that was refiled in DOB NOW is counted once, and each BIS job shows its latest status.
  • Listed: new buildings and major renovations with at least 3 homes, 3 stories or 5,000 square feet, and conversions that add 20 or more homes. Withdrawn filings, filings left incomplete for over a year, BIS pre-filings and placeholder filings with impossible sizes (over 110 stories) are left out.
  • Dates are filing dates. A filing counts as approved once the city has approved its plans or issued a permit or certificate of occupancy. A new building whose plans are still in review but which already holds permits for foundation, excavation or other early work is shown as early work permitted, and isn’t counted as approved.
  • Units are the homes proposed on the filing. A conversion or enlargement counts the homes it adds, including rebuilds that keep parts of an old building; a renovation that adds no homes shows the building’s total. Hotel rooms are shown as rooms and never counted as homes. A new building counts as a hotel when its filing says so, or when the city’s land-use records list the finished building as a hotel with no apartments.
  • Units and stories come from each building’s own application. Later filings on the same job often repeat or garble these numbers, so they don’t override it, with one exception: when several buildings on a block each list the same development-wide total and their follow-up filings split that total exactly, each building gets its own share. Floor area uses the latest approved filing on the job.
  • Costs are as filed. Amounts of $100 or less, and new-building costs under $10,000 or under $10 a square foot, are placeholders and aren’t shown.
  • Each filing sits on its block and lot, or on DOB’s own lot number when the block and lot isn’t a real tax lot. Filings without coordinates are placed at their tax lot; about 0.4% can’t be placed at all.

Jersey City building permits

  • Issued permits only, dated by issue: the city’s permit portal since July 2023, and New Jersey’s construction permit records before that.
  • New buildings are identified by the case type or the work description, since some were filed as alterations. Antennas, signs, scaffolds and sidewalk sheds never count. Major renovations are alterations of $1 million or more.
  • Units and stories come from the permit, then its work description, then the state parcel record of buildings finished since the permit was issued. The state permit file caps units at 999.
  • A $1 building-cost placeholder, or an alteration cost over $100 million, isn’t shown as a cost.

Neighborhoods

  • New York neighborhoods follow the Department of Finance’s names for each tax block; Jersey City follows the city’s neighborhood map.
  • Projects are counted by building, so separate buildings on one lot count separately. Apartment buildings have 5 or more homes; houses have 1 to 4.
  • A neighborhood gets its own page and ranking with 3 or more projects. City and borough totals include the smaller ones.

New York property taxes

  • Assessments come from the Department of Finance’s property valuation records. Market value is the city’s estimate; taxable value is what remains after exemptions.
  • Bills come from the city’s property charges, taking each installment’s latest re-bill. A year counts as billed only when every installment is there.
  • A year with no published bill is calculated from its taxable value, the city’s published tax rate and that year’s abatements, and drawn dashed on the chart. Before 2022 the city publishes no abatement amounts, so those years are left blank for lots that had one.
  • Tax breaks come from the city’s exemption and abatement records. Tax forgone is estimated at the published rate for the roll year; programs whose owners make payments instead, such as PILOTs and Mitchell-Lama, show no estimate.

Jersey City property taxes

  • Assessed land, improvements, net value and last year’s tax come from New Jersey’s parcel records. When the net value is below land plus improvements, the difference is shown as exemptions and abatements.
  • PILOT agreements come from the city’s PILOT workbook.

Zoning

  • New York zoning comes from the city’s PLUTO dataset. Allowed floor area is the higher of the residential and commercial limits; a higher community-facility limit is listed separately. Bonuses, transfers and older rules can allow more than base zoning.

News

  • Articles from New York YIMBY, Jersey Digs and Brownstoner are placed by the address in the headline, or by the street address the publisher tags the story with; Brownstoner’s tagged addresses are read as Brooklyn, which it covers. A match must be on the same street and in the same borough; when the geocoder has none, a DOB filing at that address supplies the lot. Stories without an address aren’t placed.

Privacy

  • Umarelli shows no owner names. Applicants who are private people appear as “a private applicant”, and Jersey City permit contacts are never stored.

Checks

  • A set of hand-verified lots is re-checked against the code before changes ship. Every day the New York permit list is compared with the Department of Buildings’ own count, and each source’s freshness is listed on the sources page.