NYC Bed Bug Registry & Reporting: How to Check a Building and File a Report

Plain-English explainer, not legal advice. For a specific dispute, consult a tenant attorney or the relevant NYC agency.

There is no official “NYC bed bug registry”

People search for a bed bug registry expecting a city-run lookup where you type an address and see whether a building has had bed bugs. That is not quite what exists, and the gap matters — because the thing that does exist is genuinely useful, and the thing people imagine would mislead them.

What New York City actually has is three records:

1. The bedbug annual report. Local Law 69 of 2017 requires all multiple dwelling property owners to attempt to obtain the bed bug infestation history from the tenant or unit owner, including whether eradication measures were employed. Owners file annually between 1 and 31 December, for the previous year running 1 November through 31 October. HPD makes the submitted information publicly available through HPDONLINE. (NYC HPD — Bed Bugs)
2. The filing receipt and the safety guide. A property owner must either provide the filing receipt to each tenant — on a new lease and with each renewal — or post it in a prominent location in the building. The owner must also either distribute to each tenant or post the DOHMH “Stop Bedbugs Safely” guide. (NYC HPD)
3. The disclosure to new tenants. New York State law requires property owners to disclose bedbug infestation history dating back one year to new tenants, through the Bedbug Disclosure Form. NYC Health puts the same duty plainly: property owners must provide tenants with a written bedbug history notice covering the building’s infestations in the past year. (NYC HPD · NYC Health)

So the closest thing to a real registry is the annual filings — searchable on HPDONLINE, and published in bulk as the Bedbug Reporting dataset on NYC Open Data. Both are public and free. (NYC Open Data — Bedbug Reporting)

Separately, private “bed bug registry” websites collect user-submitted reports from tenants and hotel guests. Those can be worth a look, but they are not city records, nobody verifies them, and an address with no entry means nothing at all.

One more thing HPD says, and it is worth knowing before anyone calls you: the annual filing is free, and HPD warns that “some companies are reaching out to property owners attempting to obtain significant fees for the filing of this report.” If someone offers to file it for you for a fee, that is the tell.

How to check a building’s bed bug history

Ask the landlord first. The written bedbug history notice is the fastest route and you are entitled to it. Ask before you sign. If the building posts its filing receipt rather than handing it out, look in the lobby.

Then look the building up on HPDONLINE. HPD makes the submitted bedbug filings publicly available there, by building.

Then search the bulk data. Open the Bedbug Reporting dataset and filter by house number, street name, or postcode. Each row is one building’s annual filing and carries the number of dwelling units, the number reported infested, the number where the infestation was eradicated, and — the most revealing field — the number of units that became re-infested.

That last column is the one to read. A building that reported an infestation and eradicated it has a landlord who acted. A building that reports re-infestation year after year has a structural problem: bed bugs moving between units through shared walls and risers, and treatment that keeps stopping at one apartment’s front door.

Then ask a current tenant. Informal, unrecorded, and often the most accurate signal in the building.

What the records cannot tell you

This is where most guides stop, and where you get misled. Four honest limits:

• The data is landlord self-reported. Owners report their own buildings. There is no inspector confirming the numbers.
• It lags by up to a year or more. Filings land in December and describe a window that closed the previous October. At the time of writing, the most recent reporting period in the public dataset ended 31 October 2025. A bed bug problem that started this spring is in nobody’s filing.
• It is building-level, not unit-level. A filing tells you a building had infested units. It does not tell you which ones, or whether yours was among them.
• It only covers multiple dwellings that file. Small buildings outside the requirement, and owners who simply do not file, produce no record. A building with no filing is not a building with no bed bugs.

Read the filings as evidence of a landlord’s behaviour over time, not as a clean bill of health for an apartment.

How to report an infestation, step by step

1. Document it. Photograph the insects, any bites, and the dark spotting bed bugs leave on mattress seams and bedding. Bed bugs spread by hitchhiking and readily travel 5 to 20 feet from a harbourage to a host, so check the bed frame and headboard first. (US EPA — How to Find Bed Bugs)
2. Notify your landlord in writing. Email or letter to the owner or managing agent. Keep a dated copy. Verbal notice leaves you nothing to point at later.
3. Ask for a professional, and for the neighbours to be inspected. NYC Health tells building owners that when an apartment is found to have bedbugs they should notify and inspect all units across, above and below the infested one, and hire a pest management professional. A single treated unit in a multi-unit building rarely ends the problem.
4. Escalate if it is ignored. NYC Health says you can file a bedbug complaint online or by calling 311. New York City lists bedbugs as a Class B violation — considered hazardous — which means the landlord has 30 days to correct the problem, must get rid of the infestation, and must keep the affected units from becoming infested again. (NYC Health)

Why documentation decides this

Both records above are documentation problems wearing a legal costume. The owner has to file something in December. The tenant has to prove they gave notice. A dispute six months later is settled by whoever kept the paperwork.

That is also why treatment quality shows up in the filings. NYC Health warns tenants and owners alike to be wary of companies that make unrealistic claims about controlling an infestation with just one visit, and to seek a company that provides a warranty as well as a follow-up visit. The US EPA is blunter still: bed bugs reproduce quickly and their eggs resist many methods of control, so very few infestations are eliminated by a single treatment. (US EPA — Controlling Bed Bugs Using IPM) A company that promises one visit and vanishes is how a building ends up in the re-infestation column.

For the underlying rules, see our NYC bed bug law guide. For treatment with the documentation tenants, landlords and co-op boards actually need, see our bed bug treatment.