Code violation leads: where cities publish them, and are they worth mailing?
By Josh MillerUpdated 4 min readCode violations are issued by the city's building or code enforcement department, and many large cities publish them as open data you can download free: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Los Angeles among them. They're a middle-of-the-pack list: in one client's market ranked on the same years, code violations sold less often than foreclosures, tax sales and probate, and more often than divorce or owners living elsewhere.
A code violation tells you a house has a problem the owner hasn't fixed. Sometimes it's a tall-grass ticket on a busy family's lawn. Sometimes it's an unsafe porch on a vacant house whose owner lives three states away. The trick is telling them apart.
Where the lists come from
Code violations are a city record, not a county one, which is why most property data tools carry them thinly. The building, housing or code enforcement department writes them, and many big cities post them as open data you can download free:
- New York City: housing maintenance code violations from HPD, on NYC Open Data.
- Chicago: building violations, on the Chicago Data Portal.
- Philadelphia: Licenses and Inspections violations, on OpenDataPhilly.
- Detroit: blight violation tickets, on the city's open data portal.
- Los Angeles: code enforcement cases from the building and safety department.
If your city doesn't publish, a public records request usually gets the list. Ask for the address, violation type, date opened, status and owner of record.
Read the violation, not just the address
Filter before you mail. These usually matter:
- Unsafe structure or condemned: the owner can't rent or live in it as is.
- Vacant building registration: the city already knows it's empty.
- Repeat or escalating violations: the owner isn't fixing things.
- Unpaid fines that became liens: the problem is now on the title.
A one-time weeds or trash ticket on an occupied house, closed within a month, is mostly noise.
Where code violations ranked
Code violations aren't in our county-by-county counts, because the county records most data sources build on don't include them. We have a ranking from a different source: in one client's market in Tennessee, with the market and the years held the same for every list, we ranked each list by how often its houses sold. Code violations came in the middle, below a foreclosure filing, a tax sale and probate, about level with vacant houses, and above divorce, owners living elsewhere and free and clear.
That's a list worth working, especially stacked with something else. A code violation on a vacant house owned by someone living elsewhere is a stronger lead than any one of the three.
How to work it
- Pull new violations weekly, filtered to the serious types.
- Match the owner's mailing address from the county property records. Many of these owners don't live at the house.
- Stack it: look for the same address on your vacant, tax or lien lists. How list stacking works.
Read your county free to see which county lists sold best before you add a city list on top.
Questions investors ask
Where can I find code violation lists?
From the city, not the county. Search your city's open data portal for building, housing or code enforcement violations. New York (HPD housing violations), Chicago (building violations), Philadelphia (L&I violations), Detroit (blight tickets) and Los Angeles (code enforcement cases) all publish them.
Are code violation leads good for wholesaling?
A real list, not a top one. In one client's market, ranked with the market and years held the same, code violations sold less often than foreclosure, tax sale and probate, and about as often as vacant houses.
Which code violations matter most?
The ones that cost the owner money or time: unsafe structure, vacant building registration, repeated violations and unpaid fines that become liens. A single tall-grass ticket on an occupied house means little.
Are code violation lists free?
Often, when the city publishes open data. Where it doesn't, a public records request usually gets the list, sometimes for a fee.