NYC violation guides, built on the city's own data.
Each guide answers one question that owners, managers and the firms that clear violations keep asking, and answers it with what actually happens rather than with the rule. The city sets a standard. HPD's own violation file, 2,967,877 violations in our copy, shows what happens against it: how long certification takes at the median, what share is ever certified, and where cases stop. Every figure on this page is recounted each time the site is published. The status glossary says what a status means. A guide says how often it happens and how long it takes.
The questions are the ones people bring to this site: what the violation classes mean, what a certificate of correction does once it is filed, whether a heat violation's certification meets the date on the notice, why a lead paint violation stays open for months after the work was done, how a violation gets dismissed rather than closed, and what it costs to miss a hearing at OATH. Five use HPD's housing violations. The sixth uses the DOB summonses heard at OATH/ECB, a different agency with a different file. Each guide opens with the measured figure, then the rule it is measured against, then who the number matters to: the owner or manager who has to clear it, the firm that clears violations for a living, and the tenant who reported the condition.
See what is open on one building.
HPD violation classes: what A, B and C mean.
HPD sorts every housing violation into class A, B or C by hazard, and the class sets the correction window: 90 days, 30 days, 24 hours. Of the 884,091 Class C violations, 45.6% have ever been certified corrected, at a median of 16 days. Class A certifies at 31.7%, Class B at 47.2%. The guide has the three windows, how often each class gets certified, the class each of the 6 categories mostly lands in, and Class I, which clears by filing.
An HPD certificate of correction: what happens after you file.
A certificate of correction is the owner's statement to HPD that the condition was fixed. HPD records it as one of a handful of statuses. 12,283 violations carry NOV Certified On Time, 17,673 NOV Certified Late and 21,271 Invalid Certification. The median from inspection to a filed certification is 28 days across the three classes. The guide explains what HPD accepts, where a filing lands, what happens when nothing is filed, and the separate review lead paint gets.
An HPD heat violation is certified in 9 days, or not at all.
The standard for a Class C heat or hot water violation is 24 hours. HPD has recorded 149,792 Class C heat and hot water violations since August 7, 2023. 48.8% have ever been certified corrected. 12.9% have been open more than a year with no certification. 33,998 sit at NOV Sent Out with no later status and 3,705 carry Not Complied With. Heat season runs October 1 through May 31, and 86.9% of these violations date from it. The guide has the monthly shape, the median in each of the 5 boroughs, and where heat ranks on certification.
An HPD lead paint violation that needs abatement takes 70 days to clear.
Lead paint ranks 5 of 6 categories on the share of Class C violations ever certified corrected. The 5,885 Class C lead paint violations that name abatement clear at a median of 70 days. The rest of the category takes 34. HPD reviews the lead paperwork separately from every other category, so the acceptance rate is measurable here and nowhere else. Of 790 submissions, 291 were accepted. The guide covers the abatement rule, the borough split, the acceptance rate, and the statuses where lead paint cases stop.
How an HPD violation gets dismissed.
925,604 of the 2,967,877 HPD violations we hold carry the status Violation Dismissed. Where both dates exist, dismissal came a median of 101 days after inspection. Nine in ten came within 187. Dismissed and closed are not the same status. 83.8% of dismissed violations carry a certification of correction; 40.3% of closed ones do. The guide covers what has to happen before a dismissal, the split by class and by agency, and the difference from a DOB matter contested at an OATH/ECB hearing.
An OATH default judgment costs 5 times what a hearing costs.
35,162 of the 166,164 DOB summonses heard at OATH/ECB that we hold were decided in default, 21.2%, because nobody appeared. The median penalty on one is 6,250 dollars; on a matter argued and lost it is 1,250 dollars. Defaults carry 48.6% of the 529,646,027 dollars in penalties on the docket. Dismissal, which ends a summons with no penalty, ran at 15.5% of the 99,183 matters decided with someone present, and at none among defaults. The guide has every hearing outcome, the cost of each, and why vacating a default is not the same application as an appeal.
What a guide measures, and what it does not
Every figure is an aggregate over the city data the guide names, HPD's housing violations or the DOB summonses heard at OATH/ECB, counted by violation or by summons, never by building or owner. A median is the middle case: half the certified violations in that group cleared faster, half slower. The denominator is stated next to each figure because the share ever certified and the share still open past a year are different questions with different bases. A percentage is of the group named, not of everything we hold.
A guide reports what happened. It does not file a dismissal request, correct a violation, represent an owner or a tenant, or give legal advice. Anything procedural belongs to HPD's own process or, for a DOB matter, to the hearing at OATH/ECB, and is not instructed here. No building and no owner is named on this page or on any guide.
Our copy runs through September 28, 2026, the latest status date in it. HPD's own file lags the inspector by days to weeks, so the newest cases are under-counted in every guide. The figures are recounted whenever the site is published and never between publishes, and each guide's citation carries the date of the version you are reading.
Where the guides connect
A status name on its own is decoded in the status glossary; a guide is the next question, how often and how long. The borough pages carry the same 6 categories for each of the 5 boroughs, and every citywide figure in a guide is the sum of those borough rows, so the two cannot disagree. How HPD, DOB and OATH/ECB fit together is on the agencies page. How to check your own building starts on the city's own sites.
No building or owner is named on this page. Source: NYC Open Data, our own copy, recounted at every publish. Citywide, ViolationScout.