New York City's building records live in two systems, and the boundary between them is the single most common reason a building looks like nothing has happened to it. BIS — the Buildings Information System — is the Department of Buildings' legacy platform. DOB NOW is its current online one. Filings made in DOB NOW do not appear in BIS at all. And the legacy permit file stops dead in June 2020.
The line, in the data
This is not a matter of interpretation. The city publishes both permit files as open data, and the most recent permit in the legacy file was issued on 5 June 2020. Nothing has been added since. The DOB NOW file picks up from there and now holds about 978,000 permits.
| BIS (legacy) | DOB NOW (current) | |
|---|---|---|
| Open data file | DOB Permit Issuance (ipu4-2q9a) | DOB NOW: Build Approved Permits (rbx6-tga4) |
| Most recent permit | 5 June 2020 | Current |
| Job type codes | NB, A1, A2, A3, DM, SG | New Building, Alteration-CO, Alteration |
| Job status | Single letters: A, D, H, J, P, Q, R, X, 3 | Words: Permit Issued, Signed-off |
| Public portal | BIS | DOB NOW: Public Portal |
Search a building in one portal only and you get half its life. A building renovated in 2023 shows nothing in BIS; a building renovated in 2003 shows nothing in DOB NOW. Neither absence means anything.
Why there are two
DOB has been migrating filing types to DOB NOW in stages rather than all at once, and the migration is not finished. DOB's own position is that the DOB NOW public portal will fully replace BIS once all filings and requests have been deployed there, and that existing BIS data will be maintained and remain available in the meantime. Some things also sit outside both — permit renewals for BIS-era jobs, and certain applications, still run through the eFiling system.
A practical consequence for owners and contractors: a job filed in DOB NOW must have its permits issued and renewed in DOB NOW. You cannot move a filing between systems.
What else splits across the two
Permits are the clearest case but not the only one. Certificates of occupancy are issued in both — newer ones in DOB NOW, older and historical ones in BIS — which is why a building can appear to have no certificate when it simply has an older one; see TCO vs Certificate of Occupancy. Facade filings under Local Law 11 moved to DOB NOW too, as covered at Local Law 11 (FISP). Violations are a partial exception: the DOB violations file spans the whole period rather than splitting at 2020.
Both records key on the building, not the lot
In either system, construction records are filed against the BIN — the seven-digit identifier for one structure — rather than the BBL, which identifies the tax lot. On a lot carrying several buildings that distinction decides which records you get. Ownership, deeds and taxes go the other way and key on the lot.
How to search both without thinking about it
Check a Building queries both permit files for every address and labels which era each record came from, so the June 2020 boundary is not something you have to remember. The alternative is to search the DOB NOW public portal and BIS separately and merge the results by hand, which works but is where most people lose half the history. For what the records themselves say once you have them, see how to read NYC building permits. How the matching is done is set out on the methodology page.
Sources: NYC DOB — Guide to BIS, DOB NOW and eFiling, and DOB NOW public portal guidance; NYC Open Data — DOB Permit Issuance (ipu4-2q9a) and DOB NOW: Build Approved Permits (rbx6-tga4). Counts and dates are live values on the date queried. General information about public records, not legal advice.