Home Inspection in Queens, NY

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Queens has 96,302 two-family tax lots, and 34,190 of them (35.5%) are classed by the city’s Department of Finance as “two family converted from one family.” In Brooklyn the share is 20.9%, in the Bronx 16.1% and on Staten Island 9.1%. That single figure sets the terms for a home inspection in Queens: a large part of the borough’s two-family housing began as one-family housing and was changed later, and the tax class does not say whether the change was permitted or how well it was done.

Inspecwise is a New York State–licensed, InterNACHI-certified home inspection business based in South Ozone Park, Queens, and we work in English, Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi. This is our guide to the whole borough for people buying a house here. It uses city, state and federal records to compare the 57 Queens ZIP codes with at least 3,000 homes on building age, two-family and converted houses, basements, sewer backups and flood-insurance claims. If you are selling, our page on pre-listing inspection in Queens is written for you. Every table says what was counted, and the last section lists the sources.

Queens beside the other four boroughs

Queens has more one- to three-family tax lots (270,930) than any other borough: Brooklyn has 190,233, Staten Island 109,206, the Bronx 61,970 and Manhattan 5,599. In Queens 55.6% of those lots are one-family houses, while in Brooklyn and the Bronx about two-thirds are two- or three-family. Queens also holds 55% of the city’s converted two-family lots (34,190 of 61,967).

Queens’ 50.2% built before 1940 sits between Brooklyn’s 71% and the Bronx’s 46%. We quote shares of lots and never a median year, because the city’s year-built field for older buildings is often a rounded estimate. Queens and Staten Island are both above 4 sewer-backup complaints per 1,000 homes and Brooklyn is at 2.3, but those are calls from the public in 2025 and not confirmed backups. Queens’ flood claims are very unevenly spread, as a later section shows. Sources: NYC Department of City Planning, PLUTO, version 26v2, for the lot counts and shares; NYC 311 for the complaints; OpenFEMA for the claims.

A ZIP code is not a neighborhood: how to read the Queens tables

A ZIP code is a mail-delivery area. Its edges ignore the lines that residents, community boards and the Department of City Planning draw around neighborhoods, and some neighborhoods share a ZIP or are split between two. We put a place name beside a ZIP only where a city document supports it. A fiscal 2017 statement of needs from Queens Community Board 10 says the district contains all of South Ozone Park (ZIP 11420), all of Ozone Park (11417), all of Howard Beach (11414) and about half of Richmond Hill South (11419). For other ZIPs we name the community district, using NYC Planning’s lists of the neighborhoods in Community District 9 (Kew Gardens, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill and Woodhaven) and Community District 12 (Hollis, Jamaica, Jamaica Center, North Springfield Gardens, Rochdale, South Jamaica and St. Albans), together with our own count of which district each ZIP’s tax lots fall in.

The city Health Department adds a third set of labels. Its health surveys sort ZIP codes into 42 “UHF neighborhoods,” each a named group of ZIPs, and ten of them are in Queens (Health Department ZIP table). Wherever this page lists ZIPs, a column headed “Health Department neighborhood” gives the Department’s name. Those are the Department’s health-survey names for groups of ZIPs and not official boundaries, and they do not always match what residents call a place.

ZIPs 11418 and 11419 are the oldest of the seven: about nine in ten of their lots have a recorded year built before 1940, and between a fifth and a quarter of all their lots are recorded as converted from one-family. Howard Beach (11414) is the youngest, with 17.8% of its lots recorded before 1940 against 56.6% in the median ZIP. And ZIP 11693 has a full basement under only 45% of its lots where the median is 92%, a difference that matters when the question is water.

The Health Department’s ten Queens areas side by side

The table pools the ZIPs in each Health Department area. Percentages are the median of the area’s ZIPs that have at least 100 residential lots; the sewer-backup rate pools all of the area’s complaints and homes. ZIP 11697, which has 2,837 homes on 3 lots, is counted in the Rockaway homes, complaints and claims but not in its medians.

Four patterns stand out. The Long Island City – Astoria area is mostly apartment buildings: a median of 8% of its lots are one-family houses and 64% have a full basement. Southwest Queens has the oldest stock, with a median of 77% of lots built before 1940, and, with Jamaica, about 16% of lots recorded as converted. The Southeast Queens and Jamaica areas have pooled sewer-backup rates of 10.4 and 8.7 per 1,000 homes against 4.1 for the borough. And the Rockaway area has full basements under a median 62% of lots but 10,212 of the borough’s 14,842 flood claims (69%), 6,427 of them for Hurricane Sandy.

Apartment ZIPs, postwar house ZIPs and prewar ZIPs

A second sort groups the 57 ranked ZIPs by the kind of building that dominates. The rules are ours and are applied in this order: fewer than a quarter of lots in one-family houses makes an apartment-building ZIP; of the rest, half or more of lots built from 1940 through 1959 makes a postwar ZIP; of the rest, three-quarters or more built before 1940 makes a prewar ZIP. The other 31 ZIPs, about 51% of the ranked homes, fit none of the three and sit in the middle of most ranges, so use the ZIP table near the end, not the group, when you are looking at a specific address.

Apartment-building ZIPs

Thirteen ZIPs (11101, 11102, 11103, 11105, 11106, 11109, 11368, 11372, 11373, 11377, 11385, 11416, 11692) with 296,739 homes, about a third of the ranked total, across the Health Department’s Long Island City – Astoria, West Queens, Ridgewood – Forest Hills, Southwest Queens and Rockaway areas. One-family houses are the minority (a median of 18% of lots) and so are full basements (73%). About half the lots hold something other than a one- or two-family house: a three-family house, an apartment building, a co-op, a condominium or a building with a store at street level. ZIP 11109 has 3,352 homes on only 10 tax lots, so its percentages describe ten buildings. If you are buying an apartment, our page on co-op and condo inspections explains what that visit covers.

Postwar ZIPs

Eight ZIPs (11004, 11364, 11365, 11366, 11367, 11411, 11426, 11427), 76,489 homes: the borough’s one-family neighborhoods, with a median of 76% of lots one-family, 97% with a full basement and 15% recorded before 1940. Their sewer-backup rates run from 2.3 to 10 per 1,000 homes. A house from 1940 to 1959 is now 67 to 86 years old, so the first job of the inspection is to establish which systems are original. The Standards of Practice have us describe the heating fuel and equipment, the service amperage and any aluminum branch wiring, and the piping materials, and report what is deficient in each (19 NYCRR 197-5.8, 5.9 and 5.10).

Prewar ZIPs

Five ZIPs (11104, 11418, 11419, 11421 and 11428), 55,654 homes. A median of 90% of lots were recorded before 1940, and one- and two-family houses are about equally common, each near 42% of lots. If you plan to rent a floor, two rules turn on a building’s age. HPD puts units occupied by tenants in houses of one or two units built before 1960 within Local Law 1 of 2004, and EPA’s renovation rule applies to paid work in homes built before 1978 and to owners who rent out part of their home. Our guides to lead paint and asbestos explain testing. Our page on South Ozone Park, where we are based, shows the same measures at street level.

Two-family houses and the conversions behind them

The city’s building classes separate a two-family house built as two-family (B1 brick, B2 frame) from one “converted from one family” (B3). Queens has 27,206 B1 lots, 32,735 B2 lots and 34,190 B3 lots (its other two-family lots are in other B classes), so the converted class is the largest of the three, narrowly. In Brooklyn the brick class is more than twice the size of the converted class.

As a share of all residential lots, the median ZIP has 9.2% in the converted class. Twelve ZIPs are at 15% or more: 11355, 11369, 11374, 11412, 11417, 11418, 11419, 11420, 11422, 11434, 11435 and 11436. ZIPs 11419 and 11420 are at about a quarter. These counts come from the tax classification and not from complaints.

The class tells you the house was changed at some stage from one household to two. It does not tell you when, who did it, whether the Department of Buildings gave a permit, or whether the result is safe. A buyer can close that gap in three steps:

• Read the certificate of occupancy for the unit count. It states the legal use. The records section below says where to find it.
• Count what you can see. Kitchens, electric and gas meters, boilers, entrances and the number of names by the bells. Any of these can differ from the certificate.
• Ask the seller in writing. The disclosure statement the seller delivers before you sign is the place for the seller’s answers, and your attorney can ask for more.

We report what is in the house: the service size and panels, whether each unit has heat and its own way out, and what looks added. We do not decide whether the work is lawful. The state’s rules say a home inspector may not determine compliance with regulations, codes or laws, and need not report past or present violations (19 NYCRR 197-4.4, and the Standards’ list of limitations). Our guide to two- and three-family house inspections covers the process.

Basements: nearly universal in some ZIPs and rare in others

The city’s property file gives each lot a basement code, and we count codes 1 and 2 as a full basement. The median Queens ZIP has one under 91.8% of its lots. In 33 of the 57 ranked ZIPs the share is 90% or more, and in 19 it is 95% or more. At the other end, 12 ZIPs with at least 100 residential lots are below 80%. The lowest five are 11693 (45.0%), 11692 (46.2%), 11101 (50.6%), 11106 (54.0%), 11102 (58.3%): two in the Health Department’s Rockaway area and three in its Long Island City – Astoria area.

Hurricane Ida’s damage to houses fell mostly at and below ground level. For one- to four-unit properties, the City’s recovery plan attributes most of the damage to flooding of below-grade or ground-level space and places the damaged properties mainly in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx (NYC CDBG-DR action plan). The Comptroller names Queens Districts 5 and 12, with Brooklyn 18, among the community districts with the highest concentration of basements and cellars in one- to three-family homes (NYC Comptroller), and the Mayor’s task force says the majority of the city’s illegal basement apartments are in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx (task-force report). The problem is older than Ida: FEMA records that on 3 January 1999 people had to be rescued from basement apartments in Springfield Gardens when water rose nearly to ceiling height (FEMA P-2333).

Whether a basement unit is lawful is a separate question from whether it is dry, and the rules have moved. The city adopted its accessory-dwelling rules in December 2024, and the pilot for legalizing existing units covers only Queens Community District 2. We set the details out on our South Ozone Park page, and the Department of Buildings’ ADU page has the current text. Read it on the day you decide.

Sewer backups: the twelve ZIPs where 311 hears about them most

In calendar 2025 the 311 line took 3,688 sewer-backup complaints from Queens addresses, 4.1 per 1,000 homes. The median ZIP is 3.7, and ZIP rates run from under 1 to nearly 15. A complaint is a report from a resident and not a confirmed backup, and repeat calls from one address push a count up. The twelve ZIPs below have the highest rates. We checked the month-by-month counts for each, and in none does a single month hold more than about a fifth of the year’s complaints, so the list does not hang on one storm.

Six of the twelve are in the Health Department’s Southeast Queens area, five in its Jamaica area and one in Southwest Queens. That Southeast Queens is a health-survey label and is not DEP’s Southeast Queens flood program, which DEP defines as Community Districts 12 and 13. Two further things stand out. Every one of the twelve has a full basement under at least 93% of its lots, so a backup has somewhere to go. And seven of them have fewer than 30 flood-insurance claims in the whole period since 1978. Rain-driven sewer trouble and coastal surge flooding are different problems, and only the second shows up strongly in the claims file, so a buyer who relies on flood-zone status or claims history alone will miss the first.

The pipe that carries a house’s waste to the sewer main in the street belongs to the owner, according to DEP’s sewer-backup page; the main itself is the City’s. That is why a camera inspection of the line is worth arranging before closing in ZIPs like these. The state’s Standards of Practice do not require a home inspector to observe underground drainage, so the camera inspection is a separate service; see our sewer scope guide. The 2022 Plumbing Code requires backwater valves where drains are subject to backwater from the public sewer and treats buildings in flood hazard areas as subject to it; DEP’s backwater valve report reads that as no requirement elsewhere. A licensed plumber installs one, and DEP warns that a poorly maintained valve causes backups instead of preventing them, so ask when any valve was last serviced.

Flood-insurance claims by named storm: where Sandy hit and where Ida did

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program file shows 14,842 claims from Queens ZIPs since 1978. FEMA labels each claim with a named event, and 7,623 (51%) carry Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Irene accounts for 1,220, Hurricane Ida for 266, and 5,733 are for other events, among them nor’easters and storms FEMA names by season, or no named storm. Six ZIPs hold 12,241 of the claims, 82% of the total: 11414 (Howard Beach, in the Health Department’s Southwest Queens area) and the five ZIPs of its Rockaway area.

ZIP 11697 has 2,837 homes on 3 residential tax lots, so it is not one of the 57 ranked ZIPs, but it has more claims than any other Queens ZIP. A claim is a loss paid under a flood policy and not a count of floods: it appears only if the owner held a policy and filed, so a ZIP with few claims is not necessarily dry. In 42 of the 64 Queens ZIPs the file shows 50 or fewer claims in all those years.

Ida’s pattern is different. It reached 44 of the 64 ZIPs, but no ZIP has more than 23 Ida claims, and in 11357, 11354, 11365 and 11358 Ida claims outnumber Sandy claims. That fits the City’s finding that only 6.9% of the buildings Ida damaged stood in the 100-year floodplain. The practical lesson for anyone arranging a home inspection in Queens is to check the address on FEMA’s flood map and the city’s flood maps, and then not to stop there. Ask about the basement’s history, look at the grading and window wells, and treat a clean map as a partial answer.

Radon in Queens basements: what the state’s kit results do and do not show

The State Department of Health publishes results for radon test kits sold or processed through its own program, cumulative since 1987. For Queens, 3.7% of the 598 basements tested in that program measured at or above 4 picocuries per liter, the level at which EPA and the State both recommend fixing a home, and 0.8% of 118 first-floor tests did. Brooklyn’s basement figure is 10.2% of 528 and Manhattan’s 12.2% of 131 (NYS Department of Health, radon results by town). The State is clear about the limit: 30,000 to 40,000 tests a year in New York are done outside its program, so the figures are not an estimate of the share of Queens homes above the level.

EPA’s 1993 map puts Queens in Zone 3, where the predicted average indoor level is below 2 picocuries per liter, and the same EPA map for New York says all homes should be tested regardless of zone. The State says the only way to know a home’s level is to test it (NYS DOH radon page). A home inspection under state law does not include radon, so it is a separate test, and the one to add when the basement is lived in. New York does not certify or license radon testers; the Department of Health advises hiring a certified tester, and the lab that reads the test must hold the State’s ELAP certification. See our radon testing page.

Heating fuel in the eight ZIPs with Census data, and the oil tank question

The Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 survey shows about 74% of Queens homes heated with utility gas and about 10% with fuel oil, roughly one home in ten. We pulled ZIP-level figures for the eight ZIPs below; the oil share runs from about 4% in Howard Beach to about 11% in ZIP 11418. These are survey estimates with margins of error, so do not read a difference of a point or two as real.

Whether a house burns oil is one of the first things to settle before a home inspection in Queens, because an oil-heated house has a tank and the tank generates most of the extra questions: where it is, how old it is, whether there is staining under it, and whether a house that has since changed to gas still has one in the ground. The state’s Standards of Practice do not require an inspector to observe underground storage tanks, so a buried tank needs a separate search; our oil tank guide explains the options. If you buy a two-family house and rent out a floor, the duties of a landlord come with it, including the lead-paint rules described above.

Records to pull before you sign: certificate of occupancy, permits and violations

The Department of Buildings’ public records hold much of what an inspection cannot tell you. Your attorney will order a municipal search, but you can read the same pages yourself, and doing so before the inspection helps, because the records shape what we look at.

The 311 line shows how often neighbors report on these matters. In 2025 it logged 3,334 complaints from Queens about work without a building permit (3.7 per 1,000 homes), 8,094 about illegal conversion of residential space (9.1 per 1,000) and 503 about buildings with no certificate of occupancy. Those are reports, not findings, and the second figure includes a spike: one ZIP alone logged 490 illegal-conversion complaints in October 2025, more than four in ten of its year’s total. We therefore give borough totals and not ZIP ranks for these complaints.

Languages and the walk-through

The Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 survey shows how differently southern Queens speaks at home. In the district covering Kew Gardens, Richmond Hill and Woodhaven (Community District 9), about 38% of residents aged five and over speak only English, 34% Spanish, 6% Bengali and 4% Punjabi. Around South Ozone Park and Howard Beach (District 10) the figures are 63% English only, 19% Spanish, 4% Bengali and 3% Punjabi, and in the Jamaica, St. Albans and Hollis area (District 12) 66%, 15%, 9% and 4% Haitian. These are district-wide estimates and say nothing about any one household. Findings can be explained in English, Urdu, Punjabi or Hindi, so the closing walk-through can be held in the language the household is most comfortable in. Tell us when you book if a relative, an attorney or an agent will join.

From accepted offer to closing: where the inspection fits

In a New York purchase the lawyers move first: the contract sets how many days the buyer has to inspect, as our guide to the inspection contingency explains. Before you sign a binding contract, the seller of a one- to four-family house must deliver a completed property condition disclosure statement (Real Property Law §462). The form says it is not a substitute for any home, pest, radon or other inspections, and it asks whether a radon test has been done and whether the property has been tested for indoor mold. The seller has no duty to inspect, and the parties may still agree to an “as is” sale.

Once you hire an inspector, state rules require a written pre-inspection agreement describing the scope of the work, and the licensing law gives the inspector up to five business days after the inspection to deliver the written report, which is confidential and cannot be shared without your express consent (Real Property Law Article 12-B). Ask when you book how soon to expect yours. Four things are worth doing in Queens before the day:

1. Pull the certificate of occupancy and the Department of Buildings’ profile for the address, and send us what you find.
2. Ask the seller about water: backups, pumps, past claims and any work done on the drains.
3. Decide on the add-ons in advance. In this borough the usual ones are a radon test, a camera inspection of the sewer line and, where there is oil heat, a tank check.
4. Invite whoever will help you decide, and tell us the language you want for the walk-through.

What a home inspection in Queens covers, and what it leaves out

Under the state’s Standards of Practice, a home inspection is a visual examination of the readily accessible, visually observable systems of a house: structure and foundation, exterior, roof, plumbing, electrical, heating, cooling, interior, insulation and ventilation, fireplaces and attic. Our guide to what a New York home inspection includes has the detail. The table sets what the Queens records show against what we look at and what the Standards leave out.

Radon and pest inspections are excluded from a home inspection by the licensing statute itself, and we can arrange or recommend either as a separate service.

If you are selling a Queens house

Our page on pre-listing inspection in Queens is written for the seller and covers the disclosure statement, the records to clean up before listing and how to use a report. The law does not require a seller to inspect (Real Property Law §462), and our guide for sellers lays out the choice.

Houses, apartments and the rest of the region

We inspect throughout the five boroughs, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester. For the city as a whole, see home inspections in New York City, and for the borough next door, Brooklyn. For the Long Island suburbs, see Nassau County. If the building is a commercial or mixed-use property and not a house, our page on commercial property inspection in Queens explains what that work is and what it is not. Every borough, county and neighborhood page is listed under areas we serve.

Look up your ZIP: the ZIPs this page discusses

The table gives the numbers behind a home inspection in Queens for the 34 ZIPs discussed above, in ZIP order. “Lots” means residential tax lots and “homes” means residential units. The full list of all 57 ranked ZIPs is available on request. Treat each row as a picture of an area and not of any one address.

Frequently asked questions

About the figures on this page

• NYC Department of City Planning, PLUTO, version 26v2. Counts are residential tax lots; homes are residential units. A full basement is basement code 1 or 2. For older buildings the year built is often a rounded estimate. “Ranked” ZIPs are the 57 Queens ZIPs with at least 3,000 homes. The borough comparison counts one- to three-family lots only.
• NYC Department of Finance building classes: B1 two family brick, B2 two family frame, B3 two family converted from one family. A building class is a tax classification, not proof that work was permitted.
• NYC 311 service requests, calendar year 2025, counted by the ZIP on the complaint. Rates are complaints per 1,000 homes. A 311 complaint is a report from the public and not a confirmed violation. For the twelve ZIPs in the sewer-backup table we also counted complaints month by month.
• OpenFEMA, National Flood Insurance Program claims, version 3, counted by reported ZIP code and by the event name FEMA attaches to each claim. Claims reflect losses on flood-insurance policies only.
• American Community Survey five-year estimates for 2020 to 2024, from the Census Bureau, for heating fuel and owner occupancy (ZIP Code Tabulation Areas and Queens County) and for language (areas defined to match community districts 9, 10 and 12). Estimates carry margins of error, so we round.
• NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, United Hospital Fund codes: the Health Department’s neighborhood names for groups of ZIP codes, used in health surveys. Four Queens ZIPs (11001, 11021, 11040 and 11109) have no UHF name in the table.
• NYS Department of Health radon program results, cumulative since 1987, for tests sold or processed through the State’s program only.
• All figures were pulled in October 2026; public data changes, so check the date.

More guides for Queens

These pages go deeper on specific places and services under Queens.

• South Ozone Park: Our home neighborhood, using records for ZIP 11420 on housing age, two-family conversions, basements, sewers and flood history.
• Pre-listing inspection in Queens: For Queens sellers, covering foundations, roofs, electrical and heating systems, sewer laterals and municipal records before you list.
• Commercial inspection in Queens: Warehouses, retail corridors and mixed-use buildings in Queens: what a commercial inspection covers and what it leaves out.

Booking a home inspection in Queens

When you call, give us the address and the kind of house, and we will say what we would look at first and which add-on tests suit it. If you already have the certificate of occupancy, send it.

We are licensed by New York State; the license number is printed at the foot of every page, and here is how to check it with the Department of State, or anyone else’s. We cover the five boroughs, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester, and travel elsewhere on request.

To ask something first, call 718-925-7071.