Certificate of occupancy leads

A certificate of occupancy states that a building, or a changed part of it, complies with the code for its approved use and may be occupied. New buildings receive one at completion; conversions receive one when the use changes, office to residential for example. A temporary CO lets occupancy begin while final items are closed out, and is itself a public record.

The record carries the address, the use and occupancy classification, the number of dwelling units or the occupant load, and the issue date. It is published by the buildings department, in large cities on the open-data portal alongside job filings and permits.

The CO does not name the operator's facilities lead or the owner's asset manager. Matching the address to the owner entity or operating company, then to the person who awards service contracts, turns the record into a lead.

• Buildings department open data. NYC DOB certificates of occupancy on NYC Open Data; the equivalent datasets in other cities that publish occupancy approvals.
• Job filings and final inspections. Where a city publishes the sign-off that precedes the CO, the lead arrives a few weeks earlier.
• Hotel and operator registrations. Hotel licences and operator registrations that coincide with opening, published by the licensing authority.

Two windows. The temporary CO or final inspection is the early one: the operator is staffing up and signing vendors. The final CO is the confirmation. For conversions, the change-of-use filing that precedes the CO gives weeks of notice. Reach out in the week the record issues; by the second month the first contracts are signed.