Los Angeles Building Certificates of Occupancy

The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety issues Certificates of Occupancy for every building or structure in the city, certifying compliance with building codes and suitability for occupancy. The dataset includes detailed permit and construction information, such as the number of stories, floor area, and valuation. Columns suggest it contains applicant, contractor, and property details, linked to geographic features like census tracts and assessor pages.

Use Cases

• Assessing building density and land use using # of Stories, Floor Area-L.A. Zoning Code Definition, and ZONE.
• Tracking construction activity and contractor licensing using Contractor's Business Name, License #, and Valuation.
• Mapping property compliance and occupancy status using OCCUPANCY, Census Tract, and Latitude/Longitude coordinates.
• Analyzing residential housing supply using # of Residential Dwelling Units and Unit Range Start/End.

Strengths

• Contains detailed, structured information on over 30 columns related to building permits and occupancy.
• Includes geospatial coordinates (Latitude/Longitude) enabling mapping and spatial analysis.
• Cross-platform presence on Socrata and Data.gov signals its importance and official status.

Limitations

• Key metadata like row count, size, and license are missing or conflicting across sources.
• The dataset's temporal coverage and update frequency are unclear from the provided metadata.
• Some column descriptions are generic, and the relationship between different permit sub-types (Cofo, Permit) is not detailed.

Provenance

Source

Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS), published via data.lacity.org.

Collection Method

Administrative records collected as part of the city's building code enforcement process.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-06 according to one Socrata source.

Geography

City of Los Angeles, California, USA.