New York keeps three separate bed bug records on a building, a written disclosure your landlord has to hand you, a citywide annual filing, and HPD violations, and each one tells you something different. The fastest way to see all three at once is to search the address in the free building lookup, which pulls the reported bed bug history alongside the building's other violations.
Three Different Records, Three Different Signals
Renters searching for a building's bed bug history usually run into all three records without realizing they measure different things. One is paperwork you receive directly. One is a citywide dataset the owner self-reports. One is what a city inspector confirmed in person. Knowing which is which changes how much weight to put on what you find.
The Disclosure Form You Should Get Before You Sign
Before you sign a vacancy lease in New York City, the owner or managing agent is required to give you a written notice covering the bed bug infestation history for both your specific apartment and the building. The state's standard form for this, DHCR Form DBB-N, has the owner check boxes disclosing whether there is no history within the past year, whether the building had an infestation on a specific floor and whether it was treated, and whether your own apartment had an infestation and whether eradication measures were used. Both you and the owner sign and date it. If a landlord does not offer you this form when you sign a new lease, ask for it directly.
This requirement is not new. New York's disclosure law dates to 2010, when the state legislature passed what became known as the Bedbug Disclosure Act, requiring owners to tell prospective tenants about any infestation in the past year for both the unit and the building. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal can compel a landlord who refuses to produce the history when a prospective tenant asks for it. The form is the paper trail that law created, and it predates the citywide filing system described below by seven years.
The Annual Report Filed With the City
Separately, owners of buildings with multiple units must file an Annual Bed Bug Report with HPD every year under Local Law 69 of 2017, stating the number of units in the building, how many were infested, and how many were eradicated or re-infested. HPD makes this self-reported data public, and it is what NYC Open Data's Bedbug Reporting dataset is built from. In the 12 months ending September 22, 2026, owners filed 121,522 of these annual reports citywide, and 2,920 distinct buildings reported at least one infested unit in that period.
HPD Violations Issued After an Inspection
The third record is the one a city inspector verified in person. If an inspector confirms live bed bugs in a unit, HPD issues a Class B violation under Admin Code 27-2018, with a 30-day correction window. That is a stronger signal than either of the first two records, because it means someone from the city looked and found something, not just that a form got filled out.
These violations show up on the building's public record the same way any other HPD violation does, with the apartment number, the date HPD issued it, and whether it is still open or has been closed. A closed violation does not necessarily mean the unit you are considering is unaffected. It only tells you that HPD accepted the owner's certification or verified the fix for the specific apartment where the violation was written, which may not be the apartment you are about to rent.
What the Annual Report Data Can and Cannot Tell You
The Bedbug Reporting dataset (data set ID wz6d-d3jb on NYC Open Data) includes the building's address, borough, BIN and BBL, the total number of dwelling units, the infested unit count, the eradicated unit count, a re-infested unit count, and the filing period dates. That level of detail lets you see whether an infestation was recent, how large it was relative to the building, and whether it came back.
What it cannot tell you is whether the report is accurate. The data is self-reported by the property owner, not verified by HPD before publication, and it can contain plain data-entry mistakes. Querying the dataset directly turns up at least one filing with an infested-unit count in the hundreds of thousands, a number no single NYC building could plausibly have. Treat any individual filing as a starting point for questions, not as a verified fact, and weigh it alongside HPD's own violation history for the same address.
The dataset also cannot tell you which apartment was affected, only whether the building as a whole reported an issue that year, and it will not show you anything about a building that simply never filed. Filing compliance is uneven. A missing report is not the same as a clean history. It may mean only that the owner has not submitted one, which is itself something worth asking about directly.
Reading a Bed Bug Violation Correctly
Not every violation with the word "bedbug" in it means an inspector found bugs. A large share of them are for an owner failing to file the paperwork in the first place, which is a compliance problem, not evidence of an infestation.
| Violation type | What it actually means | Open citywide, September 22, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Failure to file annual bedbug report | The owner did not submit the required Local Law 69 paperwork. Says nothing about whether bugs are present. | 189,532 |
| Bedbug condition found by an inspector (6,051 of them Class B) | An HPD inspector found live bedbugs in a specific apartment. | 6,167 |
When you pull up a building's violation list, read the actual description rather than stopping at the word "bedbug." A paperwork violation tells you the owner is behind on a filing. A Class B nuisance violation under 27-2018 tells you an inspector confirmed bugs in a unit. If you already live somewhere and the second kind shows up, the next step is pushing the landlord to treat it, and if they will not, the escalation path to Housing Court is the same one used for other unaddressed pest problems. An HP action lets a tenant ask a judge to order the repair if a landlord ignores it.
Questions to Ask the Landlord Directly
Public records lag reality by weeks, so a clean lookup is not a guarantee. Before you sign, ask the landlord in writing whether the unit or building has had bed bugs in the past year, whether they have the DHCR disclosure form ready for you to review, and whether any recent treatment happened in a neighboring unit. Keep the answer in writing. If it turns out to be wrong after you move in, that written record is what supports a habitability claim, and it strengthens your position when you compare it against whatever the city's own records eventually show once a report or violation catches up. Run through the rest of the pre-signing checklist at the same time, since bed bugs are one item on a longer list of things worth confirming before you commit to a lease.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Can I Check an NYC Apartment's Bed Bug History Before I Sign a Lease?
Search the address in a building lookup that pulls HPD's annual bedbug filings and violations, and ask the landlord directly for the required DHCR disclosure form covering the past year. Neither one alone is complete. The filing data can be outdated or self-reported inaccurately, and a landlord's verbal answer is not enforceable the way a signed written disclosure is.
Are Bed Bugs Common in NYC Apartments?
They are common enough that the city built two separate reporting systems for them, an annual owner filing and inspector-confirmed violations. Most buildings in any given year do not report an infestation, but the numbers are not negligible across a rental market the size of New York City's, which is why the disclosure and reporting requirements exist in the first place.
Does a Clean Bed Bug Record Mean the Building Is Fine?
No. It means nothing has been reported or confirmed yet, not that nothing has happened. Owners self-report the annual filing, some infestations never get reported at all, and HPD only issues a confirmed violation after an inspector visits and finds live bugs. Treat a clean record as a reasonable sign, not a guarantee.
What Should I Do If I Find Bed Bugs After I Move In?
Notify the landlord in writing right away and keep a copy. Paying for treatment is the landlord's responsibility under the Housing Maintenance Code, not yours. If they do not act, call 311 to trigger an HPD inspection, and if the problem still is not fixed, an HP action lets you ask a Housing Court judge to order the repair.
What Is Local Law 69 and Why Does It Matter to Me as a Renter?
It is the 2017 law that requires owners of multi-unit buildings to file an annual bed bug report with HPD, stating how many units were infested and treated. That filing is the source of most of the citywide bed bug data you will find when you search an address, so knowing it exists helps you understand where the numbers come from and why they can lag or contain errors.
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