Key facts
- Taller than 6 stories
- FISP covers NYC buildings higher than six stories. Owners must have exterior walls inspected and file a report with DOB every five years. (NYC DOB Facade Compliance page, checked Nov 7, 2026)
- At once
- When a QEWI finds an Unsafe condition, the owner must put up public protection immediately and keep it until an amended Safe or SWARMP report is approved. (NYC DOB Facade Compliance page, checked Nov 7, 2026)
- 90 days
- An Unsafe condition must be corrected within 90 days of filing the Unsafe report. Owners are liable for civil penalties from day 90 unless an extension is approved. (NYC DOB Facade Compliance page, checked Nov 7, 2026)
- Becomes Unsafe
- A condition reported as SWARMP in one cycle that is still unrepaired, or needs repair again, must be classified as Unsafe in the next cycle. (NYC DOB Facade Compliance page, checked Nov 7, 2026)
- About 17,000
- About 17,000 buildings are subject to FISP in Cycle 10, out of roughly one million buildings citywide. (DOB FISP Recommendations Report, Dec 10, 2025, checked Nov 7, 2026)
- 315 Unsafe
- In the 12 months to Oct 31, 2026, 315 initial Unsafe and 408 initial SWARMP facade reports were filed, about six Unsafe a week. (NYC Open Data, DOB NOW: Safety facades filings, checked Nov 5, 2026)
- 90 days
- Owners must repair Unsafe conditions in a parking structure within 90 days of filing the condition assessment report, then file an amended report within two weeks of finishing the work. (NYC DOB Parking Structures page, checked Nov 7, 2026)
- 90 days
- Defects found in a boiler inspection must be corrected within 90 days of the initial inspection date, with a subsequent inspection report filed within 14 days of the follow-up inspection. (NYC DOB Boiler Compliance page, checked Nov 7, 2026)
- 1,550 garages
- As of Nov 5, 2026, our count of DOB open data showed 1,550 parking structures with an active Unsafe or SREM filing status. Status on file, not proof the repair is still open. (NYC Open Data, DOB NOW: Safety parking structure filings, checked Nov 5, 2026)
- About 100 a week
- Our count of DOB boiler filings in 2026 shows about 100 buildings a week with an inspection report that lists defects. (NYC Open Data, DOB NOW: Safety boiler filings, checked Nov 5, 2026)
The four types of construction leads
Every lead a contractor buys or finds comes from one of four places. They differ in how early the record appears, how many other firms see it the same day, and how you pay for it.
| Source | What it is | How early | How crowded | Typical cost model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bid boards and plan rooms | Project listings where an owner or general contractor invites bids. | Late. Scope is written, budget is set, the owner has decided to build. | Very. Every subscriber sees the same posting the same morning. | Subscription, usually tiered by region or project size. |
| Permit data | Building permit leads from the city or county permit office: new filings, approvals, often the contractor of record. | Late. A permit means plans are drawn and a contractor is usually chosen. | Moderate. Permit feeds are widely sold, and the permit itself can name the firm that got there first. | Subscription or per-record export. |
| Referral and pay-per-lead services | Owner or manager requests routed to several contractors at once. | Early for the request, but the request is the owner's guess at the job, not a record. | Very. The same request goes to several firms. First to call usually wins. | Per lead or per appointment, sometimes with a platform fee on top. |
| Compliance triggers | Public filings that create a legal duty to repair: an Unsafe facade report, a failed garage assessment, a boiler inspection listing defects. | Earliest. The filing lands before drawings, permit or contractor. | Low. The records are public but scattered, and most firms wait for the scaffold. | Free if you pull the records yourself. Subscription for a cleaned weekly list. |
Bid boards and permit data are not bad sources. They are late ones. By the time a job is on a plan room, the owner has an architect, a budget and a shortlist. By the time a permit is filed, the owner usually has a contractor. Both are useful for confirming what has already happened. Neither tells you who will need to hire next month.
Referral services solve a different problem. They find people who want work done and sell that interest to several firms. The lead is real, but it is a phone call, not a record, and you are one of several firms making the same call that afternoon.
Compliance triggers are the only source where the record itself is the reason to hire. In New York City, a building higher than six stories (Taller than 6 stories) must have its facade inspected under Local Law 11, and an Unsafe report starts a clock. When a QEWI finds an Unsafe condition, the owner must put up public protection immediately and keep it until an amended Safe or SWARMP report is approved. The condition must then be corrected within 90 days. That is a dated public filing, with a legal deadline and a named owner entity, created before any repair permit exists. The Local Law 11 guide covers the program. The same pattern exists for parking structures, where Unsafe conditions must be repaired within 90 days, and for boilers, where defects must be corrected within 90 days.
Why timing matters more than volume
Most construction lead generation is sold on count: so many leads a month, so many projects in your territory. Count is the wrong measure. What decides whether a lead is worth a call is where the owner is in the decision when you reach them.
An owner who has just received an Unsafe facade report has three problems on the same day: a shed must go up at once, a 90-day clock is running, and nobody is on record to do the work. If you call that week, you are often the first contractor who has read the filing. If you call when the shed goes up, you are one of a dozen firms who saw the scaffold from the street. If you wait for the permit, the job is gone.
The volume is smaller than a permit feed, and that is the point. In the 12 months to Oct 31, 2026, 315 initial Unsafe and 408 initial SWARMP facade reports were filed, about six Unsafe a week. Six buildings a week with a legal deadline and no contractor is a list an estimator can actually work. A thousand permits a week is a list nobody reads. The Unsafe filings data page keeps the weekly count.
Timing also compounds. A condition reported as SWARMP in one cycle that is still unrepaired, or needs repair again, must be classified as Unsafe in the next cycle. So a SWARMP filing is a lead on a longer fuse, and the owner who ignored it is a stronger lead next cycle. The SWARMP vs Unsafe guide explains the ratings.
How to find compliance-trigger leads yourself
You do not need to pay anyone for this. The records are public, and the method below is the one Building Sauce uses, done by hand. It takes a few hours a week for one trigger type in one city. NYC is the example because its records are the most open, but most large cities publish inspection and permit data in some form.
- Pull the trigger records. On NYC Open Data, open the DOB NOW: Safety facade filings dataset. Filter to Unsafe filings with a filing date in the last week and export the rows. The export gives the building, the block and lot, the filing status and the filing date. Do the same for parking structure and boiler filings if you want those trades.
- Check for a repair permit. Search each building in the DOB NOW portal and look at permits filed since the trigger date. A facade repair permit or an alteration permit for the exterior means a contractor is on record. A shed permit alone does not. No repair permit, the job is still open.
- Find the decider. Open the building in HPD Online. The property registration lists the owner entity, the managing agent and the head officer, with a business address and the registration date. For a building with a managing agent, the agent is who you call.
- Check the registration is current. Look up the latest deed for the building in the city's ACRIS records and compare the deed date with the HPD registration date. A registration older than the deed belongs to the previous owner. Deeds can take weeks to appear, so a very recent sale may not show yet.
- Drop what you cannot sell to, then keep a log. Remove public owners, one and two family homes and individuals' home addresses. Record each building, the filing date, the permit check and the date you called. Repeat every Monday. The rows you skip when you miss a week are the ones your competitor calls.
The honest limits: this is one trigger type at a time, it is slow at step 2, and it breaks when a dataset changes its columns. That is the trade. The records cost nothing. The hours do.
What to check before you call
Whether you pull the rows yourself or buy them, three checks separate a lead from a wasted call.
Is there an open repair permit? This is the check that matters most and the one most lead lists skip. A trigger with a permit filed after it is a job someone else has. A trigger with no permit is open. Check the permit date against the filing date, not just whether a permit exists, because older buildings have permits going back years.
Is the deed older than the registration? The owner entity on the HPD registration is only the decider if the registration was filed after the latest sale. If the building changed hands and the new owner has not registered yet, the name on file is wrong, and you will spend the call explaining it to someone who sold the building. When the sale is recent, call anyway, but say so.
Is the owner public? NYCHA, City agencies and other public owners procure through bids, not phone calls. They are not leads for direct outreach. The same goes for small owner-occupied homes, which are out of scope for most facade, garage and boiler work and are not the kind of record this method should be used on.
Two more checks help. Read the filing itself, not the summary line, because the filing says what condition the inspector found. And look at how old the filing is. A filing from last week is early. A filing from eight months ago with no permit is a different kind of lead: an owner who is late, facing penalties, and still has nobody on record. About About 17,000 NYC buildings are subject to facade inspection in the current cycle. As of Nov 5, 2026, our count of DOB open data showed 1,550 parking structures with an active Unsafe or SREM filing status. Status on file, not proof the repair is still open. Our count of DOB boiler filings in 2026 shows about 100 buildings a week with an inspection report that lists defects. There is more open work in the records than any one firm can call.
Where Building Sauce fits
Building Sauce runs the five steps above every week, for every trigger type the City publishes, and sends the result on Monday morning as one list: the building, the filing, the permit check, the owner entity and the managing agent. How it works names the records and the checks. Pricing is a flat subscription, not per lead. The NYC facade feed is live now, with parking garage, gas piping, boiler, mold, commercial roofing and Florida condo feeds to follow. If you would rather see a week's rows first, ask for a free sample.
Numbers behind this guide: NYC Unsafe facade filings, counted weekly.