Three things can stop a Brooklyn renovation permit before it issues: the ACP-5 asbestos filing, a Certification of No Harassment if the building is listed, and a possible sprinkler trigger depending on scope.
There is a fourth, and it is the owner.
The attestation
DOB NOW is the Department of Buildings' self-service system. Owners, design professionals, licensees and filing representatives all work through it.
Here is the mechanic that catches owners:
The architect or filing representative prepares the application and adds the owner's email address in the Stakeholders section. The owner receives an email, and the job appears on their DOB NOW dashboard.
Then: the owner must log in and provide an electronic signature — the attestation — before the application can be submitted.
Until that signature happens, nothing moves. No review, no permit, no work. The architect has done their part and the filing is sitting there.
This is a routine cause of a project losing a week or three, and it is entirely avoidable. It usually happens for one of three reasons: the owner has no NYC.ID account and does not want to deal with creating one, the notification email went unnoticed, or the owner assumed that engaging a professional meant the professional does everything.
You need your own account
Logging into DOB NOW requires an NYC.ID account.
Owners register as owners, not as professionals. Once registered, you can be added as the owner of record on a job filing by the filing representative.
Set this up before you need it. It costs nothing and takes minutes, and doing it under time pressure — while a contractor waits and a filing sits — is the worst version of a trivial task.
What the four modules are for
DOB NOW has four parts, and knowing which is which saves an owner a lot of confusion:
- DOB NOW: Build — construction filings. This is where a renovation application lives.
- DOB NOW: Safety — recurring compliance filings, including boiler, elevator and facade.
- DOB NOW Licensing — professional licensing.
- DOB NOW: Inspections — inspection scheduling and results.
For most owners, Build and Safety are the two that matter.
What an owner can actually do
Beyond signing, an owner with an account can submit applications, make payments, schedule appointments, pull permits, make renewals, upload supporting documentation, manage defects, and check the status of a filing or an inspection.
That last one is the most useful day-to-day capability and the most underused. You can see where your own job actually is rather than asking your architect, who then asks the expeditor, who then checks.
For an owner managing a project remotely — or a board that wants to know whether the work it approved is progressing — that is a materially better position than relying on a chain of reports.
Safety: the module for checking what should have happened
This is the use worth knowing about even if you never renovate.
DOB NOW: Safety holds recurring compliance filings — boiler, elevator, facade. Which means an owner can go and verify that filings which were supposed to have been made actually were.
Two situations where that matters a great deal:
Taking on a building. Diligence usually covers violations. It less often covers whether the recurring filings are current, which is a different question with its own exposure — and one that sits alongside checking the building's CONH list status.
Changing managing agents. When a board or owner is transitioning between agents, "compliance that turns out not to have been handled" is one of the recurring discoveries. The Safety module is where you check rather than take somebody's word for it.
Confirm current DOB NOW functionality and account requirements with the Department of Buildings. The system's modules and features change.
Where it sits in a project
Add it to the sequence the other permit pages set out:
- Check CONH list status — before scoping.
- Establish whether work is covered, and apply to HPD if so.
- Run the asbestos survey, obtain the ACP-5.
- Have the scope reviewed against the code, including alteration triggers.
- Make sure you have an NYC.ID and DOB NOW account.
- Watch for the Stakeholders email and sign the attestation promptly.
- Then the application is submitted.
Steps five and six are the only two entirely within the owner's control, and they are the two most likely to be the delay.
A small habit worth forming
Check your dashboard when a project is live, rather than waiting to be told.
An owner who logs in weekly during an active filing sees the status change, notices a defect raised, and catches the moment a signature is needed. An owner who does not is dependent on somebody else noticing and passing it on — and on a busy project, that is exactly where a week disappears.
Where a managing agent carries this
Making sure an owner has an account before a filing needs signing, watching the dashboard so an attestation does not sit unsigned, checking the Safety module to confirm recurring filings were actually made, and keeping the whole compliance calendar rather than discovering gaps at a transition is part of renovation oversight and ordinary building management.
If you have a project filed and are not sure whether something is waiting on your signature, schedule a consultation or call 718-568-9278 — or log in and look, which is faster.
This article is general information, not legal or engineering advice. DOB NOW functionality, account requirements and filing procedures change. Confirm current requirements with the NYC Department of Buildings.