What a building class code means

Where the code comes from

The Department of Finance assigns every tax lot in the city a two character building classification code. It drives how the lot is taxed and it is carried into PLUTO, the City Planning file this site uses for the physical description of a building. The descriptions below are the Department's own, taken from the classification list it publishes.

The letters that matter here

This site covers three families of code, because those are the ones that describe a building somebody buys an apartment in.

C

Walk-up apartment buildings, including walk-up co-operatives.

D

Elevator apartment buildings, including elevator co-operatives.

R

Condominium. In PLUTO a condominium normally appears once, at its billing lot, rather than once per apartment.

Lots outside those three families are not on this site even when people live in them: one and two family houses, mixed use buildings classified primarily as commercial, hotels, and institutional housing.

Every class on this site

Codes with no published description

5 of the codes used on this site (RM, RD, RX, RZ, RI) do not appear in the Department of Finance classification list. 2,390 of the 2,390 lots carrying one of them are numbered 7501 or above, which is the range the Department uses for condominium billing lots. Rather than invent a definition, building pages print the bare code and say that no description is published.

What the code does not tell you

The code describes the tax treatment and the physical type. It does not tell you the form of ownership with certainty, because a class D4 elevator co-operative and a class D1 elevator rental can look identical from the street, and a building can be reclassified. It says nothing about condition, management, arrears, or whether the building is well run.