Local Law 126 explained: NYC parking garage inspections

Who Local Law 126 covers

Local Law 126 of 2021 applies to parking structures in New York City. Parking structure owners must hire a New York State licensed Professional Engineer who is a Qualified Parking Structure Inspector (QPSI) to inspect the structure and file a condition assessment report with DOB at least once every six years. DOB runs the program under rule 1 RCNY 103-16, and the report is filed in DOB NOW: Safety.

A parking structure, for this law, is a building or part of a building used for parking or storing motor vehicles. That takes in standalone public garages, the garage levels under or beside an apartment building, and the parking decks attached to offices, hospitals and shopping centers. The law is about the structure that carries the cars, not the business of parking them. DOB lists the exemptions on its parking structures page, which cover some small private garages and open lots with no structure to inspect. The owner is responsible for knowing whether the structure qualifies.

The law followed a run of garage collapses and partial collapses in the city. The pattern was the same each time: decades of road salt, water and freeze-thaw cycles working on concrete slabs and the steel inside them, with no inspection regime to catch it. Local Law 126 was written to put parking structures on a periodic inspection cycle, the way Local Law 11 did for facades.

Who inspects

The inspection is called a condition assessment and only a Qualified Parking Structure Inspector may do it. A QPSI is a New York State licensed Professional Engineer with the experience DOB requires. The owner hires the QPSI. The QPSI inspects the structure, writes the condition assessment report, assigns the rating and files the report with DOB under their own license. The QPSI must submit the condition assessment report to DOB within 60 days of completing the assessment, with the filing fee.

The QPSI, not the owner and not a contractor, decides the rating. A contractor's opinion that a slab is spalling has no standing in the program. What has standing is the rating the QPSI filed and the date it was filed. That is the record a garage lead is built on.

The three ratings

Every condition assessment report classifies the structure one of three ways:

SREM is the rating that matters most over time. A condition reported as SREM (Safe with Repairs and Engineering Monitoring) that is not corrected by the next inspection must be reported as Unsafe. The rating is named differently from FISP's SWARMP but works the same way: a deferred repair does not stay deferred. It converts to Unsafe at the next filing, with the shorter repair window and the penalties that follow. The SWARMP vs Unsafe guide covers the facade version of that rule.

The sub-cycle table

The first inspection cycle is split into three two-year sub-cycles by borough and community district. Every parking structure files once in its sub-cycle, then again six years later.

Sub-cycles 1A and 1B have closed. Any garage in Manhattan or Brooklyn that has not filed is now late, and the status on file with DOB shows it. Sub-cycle 1C is open now and runs to the end of 2027. The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island between them hold most of the city's larger standalone garages and the parking decks under outer-borough apartment complexes, so 1C is the busiest window in the cycle.

Initial observations

Owners in the later sub-cycles did not get to wait for their window with no record on file. Owners in sub-cycles 1B and 1C had to file a one-time initial observation by a QPSI by Aug 1, 2024 under 1 RCNY 103-16, unless a full report was filed first. An initial observation is a lighter check than a full condition assessment. It gave DOB a first look at the condition of every structure in 1B and 1C before the full reports came in, and it gave owners an early warning where a QPSI saw a problem.

For a garage in 1C, that means there may already be two records on file: the initial observation from 2024 and, from this year, the full condition assessment. Where the observation flagged a concern and nothing has been done since, the full report is the point at which it becomes a dated obligation.

What happens after an Unsafe or SREM filing

An Unsafe rating starts a fixed sequence. The QPSI identifies the hazard and tells the owner what protection is needed, which can mean closing part of the deck, shoring, or taking a level out of service. The report is filed with DOB. 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. If the work cannot be finished in time, the engineer requests an extension from DOB.

A SREM rating starts a slower sequence. The QPSI's report sets out the repairs and the monitoring that goes with them. The owner is expected to complete the repairs before the next inspection. There is no 90-day clock, but there is a hard stop: whatever is still unrepaired at the next inspection gets filed as Unsafe, and then the 90-day clock starts.

Both ratings end the same way. Once the repairs are done, the QPSI inspects the work and the owner files an amended report. The report is due within 60 days of the QPSI finishing the assessment, and the filing fee is paid at the same time. DOB publishes the civil penalties for late and missing reports on its parking structures page.

As of Nov 5, 2026, our count of DOB open data showed 1,550 garages with an active Unsafe or SREM filing status. That is status on file, not proof the repair is still open. The NYC parking garages data page keeps that count current.

What this means if you sell garage work

The inspecting engineer usually designs the repair and runs the bid. If you hear about a job from the QPSI, you are one of several firms on a list the engineer drew up. If you hear about it from the filing, you are talking to the owner before the list exists.

Every Unsafe filing is a dated, public obligation to repair a specific structure within 90 days. Every SREM filing is the same obligation on a longer fuse, with a conversion to Unsafe at the next cycle if nothing happens. The filings are published on NYC Open Data as DOB NOW: Safety parking structure filings. Garage owners tend to be LLCs and REITs, so the useful contact is the registered owner entity and managing agent on file with the City, not the name on the garage sign.

The same cycle logic applies to facades under Local Law 11 and to gas piping under Local Law 152. The garage program is the youngest of the three and the one with the least competition for the filings. The parking garage feed is the weekly list of new Unsafe and SREM filings with the owner on file.

Numbers behind this guide: NYC parking garages with Unsafe or SREM status.