How to find developer’s contact information from DOB

By Atticus O’Brien-Pappalardo

A few months ago, the Office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James instructed the New York City Department of Buildings to remove the phone and email records of filing representatives from portions of the BIS Web (Buildings Information System) site in an attempt to limit identity theft, a spokesperson for the DOB told PincusCo Media back in May.

For reference, a filing representative’s contact information used to appear in section 26 of a job filing. An example of which can be seen below, taken from Taconic Partners permit application filed on August 12 for the demolition of a 34,000-square-foot retail building at 410 West 207th Street in Inwood.

Prior to the request of the NYS AG, the “Business Phone” and “E-Mail” sections would have been populated.

However, the contact information can still be accessed by viewing the scanned PW-1 form, which can be found in the job’s virtual folder.

This process is for BIS Web (Buildings Information System) filings only. A scanned PDF of the PW1 does not appear in the DOB’s new web platform, DOB NOW, according to a review of multiple filings.

Once again using Taconic Partners’ recent demolition filing as an example, the first step is to enter the “Virtual Job Folder”, circled in red below:

Once in the virtual folder, open the “Plan / Work Approval Application”, which is commonly referred to as the PW1.

On the sixth page of the scanned PW1, the filing representative’s contact information can be found on the right side of the page.

This post is part of a series on prospecting tips from various public industry data sources. Other posts in the series include prospecting tips for new condo developments and note sales.

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