Most articles about getting code violation data are guesses, written by someone who never pulled a single feed. This one is a map of the actual terrain, built from ingesting code enforcement data across more than 100 cities in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Some hand it over in a clean download. Most make you work for it. A few publish a perfect feed and then forget to turn it on.
Two honesty notes before the directory. First, this is about access, not volume. The question here is whether you can get a city's code violation data and in what form, not how many cases sit in it. Second, it moves. Cities stand up portals, break them, and wall them behind logins, so I update this as I re-pull. Every count below is first-party and dated.
Code enforcement open data is municipal code violation records published in a downloadable, machine-readable form, usually through a city open-data portal or a GIS service. Where it exists, you can export a city's whole case history yourself. Where it doesn't, the records are still public, but you get them one address at a time or through a formal records request. The single biggest factor in how hard a code violation list is to build is which bucket your city falls in. Code violations are one of several public records that matter for real estate; this page is the access map for that one.
The five access tiers
Every city I've looked at lands in one of five buckets. This is the whole picture in one table.
| Tier | What it means | What you can do | Example cities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open API / GIS | Cases published on an open-data portal or map service | Bulk export the full history yourself | Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue (WA); Portland, Bend (OR); Idaho Falls (ID) |
| Search-only portal | A public lookup, one address at a time, no export | Read case by case, or file for the bulk file | Everett, Kennewick (WA); Boise (ID); Salem (OR) |
| Published but not shared | A clean feed exists behind an un-flipped sharing switch | Ask the city to share it (a one-setting change) | Twin Falls, Rexburg (ID) |
| Records-request only | Nothing public; the data is internal | File a public records request for the case records | Kirkland, Redmond, Kent (WA) |
| Not viable | Cases are internal-only or license-blocked | Little to pull without a policy change | Federal Way (WA) |
The pattern that surprises people: whether a city is easy or hard has almost nothing to do with how big or how distressed it is. It's about which permitting software the city bought and whether someone there decided to publish. Seattle publishes deep; a wealthy suburb next door might make you file for everything.
What open access looks like
The best-case tier is a real download. Across the seven Puget Sound markets I pull live, there are 83,788 code violations on 46,778 properties as of July 2026, and all of it came out of open feeds: Seattle through the Socrata open-data API, Tacoma and Bellevue through ArcGIS map services, unincorporated Pierce County through a county case feed, and the north-end cities through their permitting portals.
Those feeds don't share one format. The cities I track run on at least seven different systems (ArcGIS, Socrata, eTRAKiT, Cityworks, CityView, EnerGov, and Accela), and each one exports differently. That fragmentation is the entire reason a national code violation list doesn't exist and why the ones you can build stay far less worked than the pre-foreclosure and absentee lists everyone buys. The upside for you: an open feed carries typed, dated, statused cases you can filter and mail against. The catch is that some publish everything uncategorized. About 48,000 of those 84,000 cases carry no type field at all, so the sorting work lands on you.
The records-wall majority
Now the hard truth. Open access is the minority. For most cities, "does my city publish code violations" answers to no, and the data lives behind a public records request.
In Washington alone, roughly 211 cities plus 14 county programs are records-request-only or intake-only, covering about 15% of the state's population with no downloadable feed at all. Even where a city won't help, the county often will: 21 of Washington's 39 counties expose property-owner data in their open GIS, which is how you attach a name to a case the city gave you address-only. Oregon is friendlier on ownership (19 of 36 counties publish owner data free), and in Idaho 27 of 44 county backbones are reachable, though state law there lets counties refuse a bulk owner list, so you compile per property instead.
None of this makes the records-wall cities off-limits. It just means the path is a request, not a download. The records are public either way. The city that tells you "we don't keep a list" is usually right about the list and wrong about their obligation to hand over the records.
How to find your city's tier
Two minutes of checking saves you an afternoon:
- Search for the portal. Look up "[your city] code enforcement" or "[your city] code compliance map." If you land on an ArcGIS viewer or a Socrata open-data page with cases on it, you're in the open tier. Look for an export or download option.
- Try the permit portal. Cities without an open-data site often expose cases through their permit search (eTRAKiT, Accela, EnerGov, CityView). If it only searches one address at a time, you're in the search-only tier.
- Assume a request otherwise. No portal means the records-request route, which is more reliable than it sounds. Code violations are public record, and a narrow request usually comes back inside a couple of weeks.
Once you know your tier, the mechanics of pulling and cleaning the file are the same everywhere. I wrote the step-by-step in how to get a code violation list in your city, including the exact records-request wording for the walled cities.
How current this is
This directory reflects re-pulls through July 2026 across the cities I actively track, plus a wider triage of jurisdictions I've scoped but don't ingest yet. Tiers change when a city migrates software or flips a sharing setting, and I revise it when a re-pull surfaces a change. The live counts (the 83,788 cases on 46,778 properties) refresh from the seven markets on the map and move as new cases land, roughly 17,600 a year across those markets.
Want to see the open-tier data without pulling it yourself? The free map shows the live cases across every market I cover, and the most common code violations breaks the same dataset down by type and city.
Frequently asked questions
Does my city publish code violations as open data?
It depends entirely on which permitting system your city runs and whether it chose to publish. Search "[your city] code enforcement map" or "[your city] open data" first. If you find an ArcGIS or Socrata page with cases, you can likely export them. If you only find a one-address-at-a-time search or nothing at all, the data is still public, but you'll get it through a records request rather than a download.
What is code enforcement open data?
It's municipal code violation records published in a downloadable, machine-readable format, typically through a city open-data portal (like Socrata) or a GIS map service (like ArcGIS). Open data means you can pull a city's full case history in bulk, filter it, and work it, rather than reading cases one at a time or filing for them.
Which cities have the best code enforcement open data?
Among the markets tracked here, Seattle has the deepest and cleanest open feed (typed, dated, statused cases through the Socrata API). Portland and Bend in Oregon and Idaho Falls in Idaho also publish directly to open GIS or API endpoints. "Best" usually means typed and exportable in bulk, which is a software-and-policy choice, not a function of city size.
Why don't all cities publish code enforcement data?
Two reasons. Many run permitting software that keeps cases internal by default, and publishing an open feed is a deliberate step someone has to take. Others treat code cases as records they'll release on request but won't post proactively. It's rarely a legal barrier, since the records are public in most states. It's a software default plus a publishing decision.
How do I get code violation data if my city doesn't publish it?
File a public records request for the code enforcement case records. Keep it narrow (one jurisdiction, a date range, the specific fields you want) and it's usually cheap and back within a couple of weeks. The city may say it "doesn't keep a list," but public records law still requires it to release the underlying case records.