Data Sources & Methodology
How ViolationNet collects, standardizes, and updates the code-violation data behind every page.
Where the data comes from
ViolationNet aggregates building and housing code-violation records published by official municipal and county code-enforcement agencies — the same public records you could request from each city, consolidated and standardized in one place. We currently cover 165 cities and track 1,557,288 violation records.
Each city's data is pulled directly from that jurisdiction's open-data portal or code-enforcement system (for example Socrata, ArcGIS, or CKAN feeds). We do not buy data from brokers and we do not scrape behind logins.
How often it's updated
We collect from official public sources on scheduled cycles. Publication timing and field coverage vary by jurisdiction, so the coverage page and each record's source date are the right way to assess recency.
How we standardize addresses
Raw government records format addresses inconsistently ("123 N. Main Street, Apt 4" vs "123 MAIN ST"). We normalize available address components to support property matching and, where possible, geocode them. A match is only as complete as the city-published record; alerts follow a newly collected matching record and its source's publication timing.
Known limitations
- Coverage depends on what each jurisdiction publishes. Some cities expose more fields (and more history) than others.
- Where a source publishes an owner-of-record rather than a responsible contractor, we label it as such rather than guess.
- Records reflect what the agency has published; newly filed violations may take a few days to appear in the source feed before we can surface them.
- ViolationNet is an information service, not a legal or compliance authority. Always confirm a specific record with the issuing agency before acting on it.
Corrections
If you believe a record is inaccurate or out of date, email support@violationnet.com and we'll review it against the source.