NYC Building Violations, by the Numbers
ViolationWatch's detection engine analyzes the full sweep of New York City's building-compliance landscape — more than a billion data points across every agency, enriched with our own proprietary detection signals. The most comprehensive report on NYC building violations ever produced. One of a kind.
01Key takeaways
Brooklyn is the violation capital
One borough holds 41% of every active DOB violation (238,419) — and leads ECB penalties with over $1 billion imposed. More than Manhattan and the Bronx combined.
Boilers are the #1 culprit
Boiler-related violations — low-pressure, high-pressure, and Local Law 62/91 — make up 58% of all active DOB violations. Heating equipment is the single biggest source of exposure in NYC.
A quarter of fines go unpaid
Of the $3.10B in ECB penalties ever imposed, $805.7M is still outstanding — about 26 cents on every dollar, sitting uncollected.
02Across every NYC agency
This isn't one agency's problem. New York's enforcement footprint spans Buildings, Housing Preservation, the OATH hearings system, 311 and DOT — tens of millions of records, every one of them public.
HPD alone: 11 million housing violations
More than half are hazardous (Class B) or immediately hazardous (Class C) — the no-heat, no-hot-water, mold and lead conditions tenants actually live with.
03By borough: Brooklyn leads everything
Active DOB violations are wildly uneven — Brooklyn alone accounts for 41% — and the ECB penalty map looks almost identical.
Active DOB violations
ECB penalties imposed
04The fines: $3.10B imposed, $805.7M unpaid
Outstanding balances don't disappear — they compound, default to the maximum when a hearing is missed, and follow the building into every sale and refinance.
05ECB penalties imposed, 2007–2025
Annual penalties peaked in 2019 at $221.0M and have stayed volatile — with a sharp jump back up in 2025.
06Boilers vs. construction
A telling split: boilers generate the most DOB violations, but construction generates the most fines. The everyday compliance grind and the big-ticket enforcement live in different categories.
Top DOB violation categories
Top ECB violation categories
07Notable findings
The cuts that don't make the dashboard but make the headlines.
The single largest ECB fine
A "Quality of Life" violation. The biggest penalties in the city consistently fall under that category — which also carries the highest average fine, at $3,658.
Violations lost by default
About 8.9% of all ECB violations end in a default judgment — the respondent never showed up, so the maximum penalty was imposed automatically.
Violations dismissed
Roughly 16.3% — about 1 in 6 — get dismissed at the hearing. Showing up and fighting demonstrably works.
Unpaid construction fines
Construction violations carry more outstanding penalty money than every other category combined — over half a billion dollars.
of cooling towers in Manhattan
Of 122,846 cooling-tower inspection records citywide — the systems behind NYC's Legionnaires' disease risk — 71% sit in Manhattan.
unpaid from 2025 alone
Most outstanding fines are recent: older penalties get paid or written off over time, but a single recent year can carry $180M+ in uncollected balances.
08The full data reference
The exhaustive cuts — what each violation type costs, how every dollar stands, and how hearings actually end. Cite any row.
ECB violations by type — volume, cost & outstanding
| Violation type | Count | Avg fine | Outstanding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality of Life | 69,897 | $3,658 | $107.6M |
| Cranes & Derricks | 10,313 | $2,900 | $3.6M |
| Signs | 25,622 | $2,541 | $5.5M |
| Construction | 1,106,726 | $1,925 | $580.4M |
| Site Safety | 34,087 | $1,604 | $8.0M |
| Local Law | 45,290 | $1,541 | $8.0M |
| Plumbing | 23,439 | $1,156 | $3.9M |
| Boilers | 65,761 | $726 | $8.7M |
| Zoning | 28,278 | $633 | $2.4M |
How ECB hearings end
Cooling towers by borough
09Frequently asked
How many building violations does NYC have?
How many HPD housing violations are there in NYC?
Which NYC borough has the most building violations?
What is the most common NYC building violation?
How much has NYC imposed in building violation fines?
How much in NYC building fines goes unpaid?
What is the fine for a building violation in NYC?
Who are the worst landlords in NYC?
How do I look up building violations on a NYC address?
How many building complaints does NYC receive?
Where does this NYC violation data come from?
10Methodology
Every figure on this page is aggregated from New York City's published records, retrieved in June 2026: DOB Violations (3h2n-5cm9), DOB-ECB Violations (6bgk-3dad), HPD Housing Maintenance Code Violations (wvxf-dwi5), OATH Hearings Division Case Status (jz4z-kudi), 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), DOB Complaints (eabe-havv), and DOT Sidewalk Violations (6kbp-uz6m). "Active" counts reflect each record's current status at retrieval; penalty totals are cumulative across all ECB violations on file. Citywide borough totals sum the five boroughs (a small share of records carry non-standard codes and are excluded). The 2026 figures are excluded from the annual trend because the year is incomplete. FDNY fire-safety violations are adjudicated through OATH, and the standalone Bureau of Fire Prevention dataset has been decommissioned. Numbers are point-in-time and shift as the city updates its records. The data is public; the analysis is ViolationWatch's.
11Use & cite this data
Every figure here is free to use — for an article, a study, a model, anything — with attribution to ViolationWatch. Grab the whole dataset as machine-readable JSON (built for developers and AI) or as a spreadsheet-ready CSV.
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