How to Find Out If You Have an Eviction on Your Record in New York City

By Cristian Cedacero, NYC Property Intel · Published August 9, 2026 · 9 min read

If you’re applying for an apartment and worried about an old housing-court case — or you’re not even sure whether a case exists — this page walks you through every place an eviction can show up, how to see each one for free, and what New York law actually lets a landlord do with any of it. You do all of this yourself, at no cost, and most of it takes an afternoon.

Can I look myself up in NYC’s public eviction records?

No. NYC’s public Evictions dataset is address-based — it lists executed City Marshal evictions from 2017 to today with no tenant names. You can look up an address you lived at and see whether a marshal eviction was recorded there, but you cannot search the records by your own name.

The city’s record here is the NYC Open Data “Evictions” dataset (6z8x-wfk4), compiled from City Marshal filings. Each row is an address, an apartment number, an executed date, a borough, and a residential-or-commercial flag — and that’s it. There is no name column. It also only records evictions that were physically carried out by a marshal. If your case settled, was dismissed, or you moved out before a marshal ever came, nothing about it appears in this dataset at all.

What checking an old address can tell you: whether a marshal execution was recorded at your former apartment, and when. If you left a building under pressure and want to know whether the record shows an actual executed eviction there — as opposed to a case that ended some other way — that’s a real, free data point. Just remember it’s about the apartment, not about you: the dataset can’t confirm who the eviction involved. Two limits worth knowing: addresses in the city file are free text, so one building can appear under several spellings and a single search can undercount it; and there’s a reporting lag, so a very recent execution may not be there yet.

🔎 Check an address you lived at — free

→ This checks the building, not you

Enter the address and see the executed marshal evictions recorded there since 2017, with the date of each. Addresses in the city file are free text, so try more than one spelling — and remember the record is about the building, not about you. No signup for your first queries.

Where does my name actually appear?

Three places: the New York State courts’ WebCivil Local search, which lets anyone look up NYC Civil Court landlord-tenant cases by party name but drops closed L&T cases about two weeks after the last appearance; the paper file at your borough’s Housing Court clerk’s office, which is the complete record; and the files that private tenant-screening companies keep about you. Each one holds different information.

Here’s how each works:

• eCourts WebCivil Local. The state court system’s free lookup at iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivilLocal/LCMain covers NYC Civil Court, including landlord-tenant (L&T) cases. Search by your own name as a party and you’ll see case captions, index numbers, and status. The critical caveat: the court system removes landlord-tenant cases from the online search no more than about two weeks after the last appearance, so a closed case almost certainly will not show up here. A clean result on WebCivil Local tells you very little about an older case — the clerk’s office below is the authoritative check.
• The Housing Court clerk’s office. Each borough’s Housing Court keeps the complete case file — every filing, stipulation, and judgment — including cases the online search doesn’t surface. If you know or suspect a case existed, the clerk’s office is the authoritative place to see the full record. Bring ID, and the index number if you have it.
• Tenant-screening bureaus. Private companies buy court data in bulk and compile files on individual renters. This is usually the version of “your record” that a landlord actually sees — and it’s the one most likely to contain errors, because the bulk data often lacks the outcome of the case. Getting your copy is the next section.

The important mental shift: there is no single “eviction record.” There’s a court file, an online index of some of it, and one or more private files derived from it. They can disagree with each other, and the private files are the ones you can fix.

How do I get my record for free?

Federal law gives you one free copy of your file every 12 months from each nationwide tenant-screening company — including TransUnion’s rental division, Experian RentBureau, SafeRent Solutions, and RealPage. And if any landlord denies you based on a report, you’re entitled to a free copy of that report too.

Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), nationwide specialty consumer reporting agencies must give you a free annual file disclosure on request. The big four in rental records:

• TransUnion (SmartMove / rental records) — TransUnion doesn’t publish a single stable consumer-request page for its rental division, so use the CFPB’s list of consumer reporting companies, which carries its current request phone number and instructions.
• Experian RentBureau — request your RentBureau Consumer Profile via the RentBureau rental-history page (mail-in form or phone).
• SafeRent Solutions (formerly CoreLogic SafeRent) — request your file through SafeRent’s consumer support page.
• RealPage (LeasingDesk) — request your file through RealPage’s consumer support page.

The CFPB’s full list covers every company in this industry, with current contact details for each — if a link above ever goes stale, start there. Expect to verify your identity (usually two documents), and expect the file by mail within a couple of weeks.

Separately: if you apply for an apartment and get turned down — or get worse terms, like a bigger deposit — based even in part on one of these reports, the FCRA’s adverse-action rules require the landlord to tell you which company supplied the report, and you can then get a free copy of that specific report from that company (ask within 60 days). That free copy doesn’t count against your annual one.

How long does an eviction stay on my record?

On a tenant-screening report, up to seven years in New York — the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act limit for most negative records, which New York law applies as a flat seven-year cap. The court file itself doesn’t expire, though. New York’s rules for sealing housing-court records are narrow and fact-specific, so ask a housing lawyer about your case.

Two different clocks are running here, and it helps to keep them apart:

• The private-file clock. The FCRA caps how long tenant-screening companies can report most negative items — generally seven years. After that, an old case should drop off your screening-bureau file, and if it doesn’t, that itself is a disputable error.
• The court-file clock. The Housing Court’s own record of the case doesn’t automatically vanish at seven years. Sealing it is possible only in narrow, fact-specific circumstances under New York law, and whether yours qualifies depends on details of the case — this is genuinely a question for a lawyer, not a web page.

For free, NYC-specific help understanding your options, start with Housing Court Answers — a nonprofit with information tables in every borough’s Housing Court and a hotline — and the city’s free legal services for tenants, which include NYC’s right-to-counsel programs. Both are free, and neither has any financial stake in your situation.

Can a NYC landlord legally reject me because of it?

Not lawfully because of the case itself, no. New York Real Property Law 227-f bars landlords from denying you housing over a past or pending landlord-tenant case. If a landlord pulls your housing-court records and then rejects you, the law presumes a violation; the Attorney General can seek penalties of $500 to $1,000 per violation.

This is New York’s anti–“tenant blacklist” law, Real Property Law §227-f, enacted as part of the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act. Three things about it are worth understanding precisely:

• What it prohibits. A landlord of a residential building may not refuse to rent to you on the basis that you were involved in a past or pending landlord-tenant case. It doesn’t matter whether you were the one sued or the one suing.
• The rebuttable presumption. If it’s established that a landlord requested your information from a tenant-screening bureau or inspected court records about you, and then refused to rent to you, the law presumes a violation. The burden shifts to the landlord to prove the denial happened for some other lawful reason.
• Who enforces it. The New York Attorney General can sue in state Supreme Court for an injunction and civil penalties of $500 to $1,000 per violation. The AG’s office has brought real enforcement actions against landlords for exactly this.

Practically: if you’re denied an apartment and you believe your housing-court history is the reason, keep everything in writing — the listing, the application, the denial — and you can file a complaint with the NY Attorney General’s office. The presumption in §227-f exists precisely because tenants rarely get told the real reason.

The three records, side by side

Because “my eviction record” means three different things, here’s how they compare:

What to do if the record is wrong

Errors in screening-bureau files are common — wrong person with a similar name, a case reported without its outcome, a settled case shown as an eviction. The FCRA gives you a concrete fix:

• Dispute directly with the bureau that has the error, in writing, with copies (never originals) of anything that proves your point — a stipulation of settlement, proof of payment, a dismissal.
• They must investigate — generally within 30 days — and correct or delete anything inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable.
• You get the results free: written results of the investigation and a free copy of your corrected file if the dispute changes it.
• If the bureau blows the deadline or stonewalls, you can escalate through the CFPB, and a consumer attorney can bring FCRA claims — the statute has teeth.

Dispute with every bureau that carries the error, not just one — they don’t sync with each other.

What to do if it’s accurate

An accurate record is not the end of your rental life in New York. Three practical moves:

• Write a short context letter. One page: what happened, what changed, and proof — a satisfied judgment, a paid-in-full letter, a reference from a later landlord. Offer it up front rather than waiting to be asked.
• Know your §227-f rights. In New York, the case itself is not a lawful reason to deny you. You don’t need to volunteer your court history, and a denial that follows a records pull is presumptively unlawful — documentation of the denial is your leverage.
• Use the free help. Housing Court Answers and the city’s tenant legal services can advise on sealing questions, ongoing cases, and what a specific record does and doesn’t mean.

If you’re a NYC landlord reading this: RPL §227-f makes denying an applicant over a past housing-court case presumptively unlawful, and this site does not provide person-level records or reports about individuals for any rental decision. Talk to your attorney about lawful application criteria — that’s outside what this site does.

Data sources: NYC Open Data “Evictions” (6z8x-wfk4), City Marshal executions, 2017–present; NYS Unified Court System (eCourts); NY Real Property Law §227-f; federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. This page is general information, not legal advice — for advice on your specific situation, use the free NYC tenant legal resources linked above.