Is my building covered by NYC Local Law 84?

The size test in the law

Local Law 84 of 2009 created New York City's benchmarking requirement. Local Law 133 of 2016 lowered the size threshold, so the definition of a "covered building" in section 28-309.2 of the Administrative Code now reads, as it appears in Department of Finance records:

• a building that exceeds 25,000 gross square feet
• two or more buildings on the same tax lot that together exceed 100,000 gross square feet
• two or more buildings held in condominium form, governed by the same board of managers, that together exceed 100,000 gross square feet
• a city building, which the law defines as a city-owned (or city-paid) building of more than 10,000 gross square feet

The law excludes real property in tax class one under New York's Real Property Tax Law, along with a few other narrow categories. The size that counts is the floor area in the Department of Finance's records, not a number you measure yourself.

How to check whether your building is on the list

The city does the sorting for you. Two places tell an owner whether a property is covered:

1. Your property tax bill. The Department of Buildings tells owners to look on their Department of Finance tax bill for a section called "One City Built to Last – Compliance Notification."
2. The Covered Buildings List. The city publishes the list every year, keyed by borough, block and lot (BBL). Find your BBL on your tax bill and look it up on the current list.

If you think your building is listed in error, the Department of Buildings directs disputes to the Department of Finance at sustainablebuildings@finance.nyc.gov. Questions about how to benchmark go to the NYC Sustainability Help Center (Help@NYCsustainability.org, 212-566-5584).

What a covered owner has to do, and by when

Each year the owner enters the building's energy use, and water use where the building has an automatic water meter, into the EPA's free ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool and submits it to the city. The law requires the owner to report every utility account and address connected to the building, including separately metered tenant spaces; the owner gets the tenant data from the utility.

The report is due by May 1 each year. According to the Department of Buildings:

• missing May 1 brings a $500 penalty
• still not reporting by the next quarterly deadline (August 1, November 1, February 1) can bring further $500 violations, up to $2,000 a year

Benchmarking also feeds a second law. Under Local Law 33 of 2018, the score from the benchmarking report becomes the letter grade the building has to post at its entrance. That is covered in our guide to NYC building energy grades.

The list versus the published results

The Covered Buildings List says which buildings must report. A separate public record shows what the buildings that did report submitted: the city's Local Law 84 disclosure dataset on NYC Open Data, published by the Department of Buildings. Each row is one Portfolio Manager property, which can span one or more tax lots (BBLs) or one or more buildings (BINs).

That disclosure dataset is what BuildingCensus is built from. Every reporting property gets a page with its ENERGY STAR score, site and source energy use intensity, greenhouse-gas emissions, water use and its history across report years. Start from the New York City hub, or browse by type, such as multifamily housing and offices.

What the New York City disclosures look like

BuildingCensus holds the latest report for 48,310 New York City properties, with 39,090 of them reporting in the 2024 report year. Multifamily housing dominates: 33,022 properties, against 3,384 offices and 2,301 K-12 schools.

Two things in that data are worth knowing before you compare your building to it:

• Floor area in the disclosure is self-reported. The dataset carries the area the owner entered in Portfolio Manager. 7,442 reporting properties list less than 25,000 square feet, which is a reminder that the self-reported figure and the Department of Finance figure that decides coverage are not the same number.
• Not every report has a score. 30,430 of the 48,310 properties carry an ENERGY STAR score; the rest report energy use without one, usually because the property type is not eligible for a score.

If your building is covered

Look it up. Search the New York City hub by name or address to see what your building disclosed last year and how it compares with similar buildings. The least-efficient ranking shows where the weakest reported performers sit.

This guide summarizes the law and the city's published guidance; it is not legal advice. For a specific building, the Department of Buildings and the Sustainability Help Center are the authorities.