Finding a place to live shouldn’t come with hidden surprises like unresolved code violations or unregistered rentals - but for too many renters, it does. This was the inspiration behind one of our successful new data tools this year: Look Before You Rent, which was co-developed between the Department of Neighborhood & Business Development (NBD) and the Office of Analytics, Performance, & Innovation (API).
Look Before You Rent is an interactive housing search tool designed to empower residents with real-time property information before they sign a lease. The focus was to create something simple and designed to work well on mobile devices. As one city leader put it, we wanted this to be “easy enough for your grandma to use.”
Why We Built It
At the direction of the Deputy Mayor and the Commissioner of NBD, our team set out to create a tool that would equip residents with the knowledge they need when searching for housing.
Listening and building with the end users was, of course, crucial. We heard from renters, housing advocates, and neighborhood groups about some of the common questions that they had:
Is this property registered as a rental property?
Are there any unresolved code violations?
Has the city inspected this property recently?
Look Before You Rent brings these answers together - in one place, in real time.
What the Tool Does
The map combines several open datasets maintained by the City of Syracuse, including:
Open Code Violations - highlighting active, unresolved issues
Rental Registry - showing if a unit is legally registered as a rental
Unfit Properties - identifying properties with serious safety concerns
Parcel File - identifying the property owner(s)
Residents can:
Search by address or neighborhood
Explore map pop-ups with detailed property info
See a full list of violations and a landlord’s other properties
Open the location directly in Google Street View
Using ArcGIS Experience Builder, we created a web-based, mobile-friendly map. We used Arcade expressions to create clean and informative pop-ups.
Built with Community, Data, and Speed
This wasn’t just a behind-the-scenes data project. We partnered with students from the State University of New York Educational Opportunity Center (EOC) to test the tool and gather feedback throughout development.
Their feedback shaped our work. For example, after students expressed that when they searched properties, they were seeing addresses that weren’t in Syracuse. Our team then limited the addresses that show up in the search bar to only include addresses within the city of Syracuse. After a student shared after searching an address, they did not realize that they needed to also click on the property to trigger the pop-up, we modified the tool to automatically select the correct property and open the pop-up with additional information on that property.
We then completed another round of user testing and received great feedback from the second group of users. Many students immediately searched their own apartments or family homes - and some discovered violations they hadn’t been aware of. That’s exactly the kind of real-world use case we were hoping for.
How It Works Behind the Scenes
The tool’s data is kept fresh with a daily pipeline powered by SQL, Python, R, and ESRI’s ArcGIS Python API. We:
Join open violations with rental registration by parcel ID
Filter the data to include only active, relevant records
Update the Feature Layer on ArcGIS Online daily
We’re also layering in contextual data like vacant properties, ownership records, schools, parks, and bike/transit routes - because housing doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
This data comes from a variety of sources including our Code Violations database, Onondaga County Planning Department’s County Parcel GIS Shapefile, and Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council (SMTC). The City of Syracuse has a data sharing agreement with SMTC to be able to share some of their civic transportation on Syracuse’s Open Data Portal.
Project Impact
We are hoping this tool can have an impact by:
Empowering residents with access to transparent property info
Holding landlords accountable through visibility and awareness
Helping external agencies like insurance providers and legal services assess risk and provide support
As of July 18, 2025, the Look Before You Rent landing page has been viewed approximately 6,700 times and the map itself viewed approximately 11,500 times since it was launched in April 2025.
And we’re not done. The tool is live and available, but we’re still gathering feedback and making improvements. Civic tech is never “finished” - it’s always evolving with the people it serves. This product management approach is core to our department to ensure technology innovations aren’t boxes to check, but useful products that constantly and consistently deliver value to the public.
What’s Next?
In the coming months, we’re working with other city departments to make sure residents know this resource exists. You’ll see us at neighborhood meetings, local events, and online spreading the word.
We’re also planning future updates, including new datasets like adding a printable view so that people can print out a properties open code violations, as well as providing information about what the code violations are that does not include as much jargon, to help make it easier to understand and facilitate greater advocacy.
If you’re a resident, community group, or civic tech enthusiast, we’d love your feedback. Let us know what’s working, what’s confusing, and what features you’d like to see next.