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Building Owner Registry (BOR) FAQs

Registering Your Properties

  • Please scroll down to see the separate section 'What Information will be Available to the Public' below for full details. 
  • The City’s launch of the Civics portal has not increased the amount of owner/manager contact information that the City makes public online. Starting in 2009, the City collected the same information via paper applications, and that information was entered into a database. The data has been available online on the Property Information viewer, the BuildingBlocks platform, and other tools since 2017.
  • As a reminder, all of this information is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and the City would be required to disclose it upon request. If you are concerned about privacy or safety, the City recommends maintaining a business address separate from your residence.
  • Please note that the property owner's name and address displayed online will be collected from the official legal owner records maintained by the Bureau of Assessment, not the information submitted in the BOR or VBR. The owner's name will match the legal owner per the deed on file with the County Clerk, and the address will be the tax bill mailing address. 

 Click here for Instructions and Contact Information

  • Due to the ease of access to the online Civics system from anywhere in the world, the City should mitigate the risk of individuals falsely submitting records for properties they don’t own, or other forms of falsifying records. The photo ID would only ever be used in cases where there is a dispute between 2 Civic accounts to help confirm who's the 'true' owner, or in cases where the City may need to verify the identity of the account for other reasons.

  • Per City Code section 90-20, a property owner may manage their properties if they are not a corporation or LLC, and have a business or residential address located within zip codes 13020 through 13905 or 14001 through 14925, and the address is not a P.O. Box. The City considers the tax bill mailing address of the property owner to be their business or residential address.
  • Any property owner who does not meet the above criteria is required to designate a property manager. This is to ensure the city has a local 'natural person' contact who is responsible for the property, they can respond quickly in the event of emergencies and are authorized to make decisions on behalf of the owner in such circumstances as well as other code enforcement related matters.

 

  • Option 1
    •  (Recommended): Single Account, "Natural Person" Authorized Agent- You are permitted to create an account as yourself as a “natural person” (i.e. John Smith) and initiate the Building Owner Registry on behalf of any of the LLC’s you are a member, owner, or for which you are an authorized agent. Any authorized agent of the LLC would be permitted to file the Building Owner Registry on behalf of the owner and sign the certification as the owner. However, this does not change the legal property owner name for the City’s official records. The legal property owner name (as listed on the deed) will still appear on all official records and bills
  • Option 2
    • Multiple Accounts, One Per LLC- This would require you to create a separate login account for each LLC and maintain a separate email address for each. This can become quite cumbersome, so the City does not recommend this option.  
  • Option 3
    • Single Account, Master LLC- alternatively, you could incorporate a master LLC that owns and controls all of your subsidiary LLC's. You could then create a single account in the name of the master LLC and conduct business on behalf of all the LLC's. Please consult an attorney to assist with this process. The City does not recommend this option.  

Please note

  • Regardless of the option chosen, you will still be required to invite yourself as an additional applicant to designate yourself as the property manager, since a property manager is required for all properties owned by an LLC. The property manager must be a 'natural person', and can’t be an LLC. Using options 1 or 3, you would need to maintain at least 2 accounts: one as the LLC and 1 as a natural person property manager.
  • Regardless of the option chosen, the Building Owner Registry submission will not alter the legal property owner name (which matches the deed) or the official tax bill mailing address which is maintained by the City's Bureau of Assessment. The legal owner name and official tax bill mailing address will still be used and printed on all bills and official notices issued by the City of Rochester. All records for the property owner posted publicly online will also list the legal property owner's name and official tax bill mailing address. If you need to update the official record for property owner's name or tax bill mailing address, please see instructions on this page. 

The BOR is intended to be initiated by the Property Owner. However, the property manager may initiate the BOR as long as the property manager is an authorized agent of the owner and has been granted authority to submit official records on behalf of the property owner. This is typically done via a management agreement, power of attorney, or if the manager is a controlling owner of the LLC property owner. In such cases, the property manager may initiate the BOR on behalf of the property owner, and invite themselves as property manager.

  • The most common issue is that the property manager is not allowed to be a company, per the City Code. They must be a 'natural person'. It is recommended that property management companies create an account for a supervisor-level person to manage records within Civics and serve as the lead contact, even if their employees may be doing most of the day-to-day work.
  • The manager must also have an address located in Monroe County, and cannot be a P.O. Box.
  • When accepting an invitation from an email to add as Property Manager, you must log into Civics first before clicking the link. If you are not logged in, it will show an error page. If you encounter the error page, attempt to log in and check your status. In most cases, it will have accepted the invite.

Locate the BOR record in your “My Records” list within Civics. Double-check to make sure that the status shows as 'Complete'. Otherwise, check the 'Current Step'. The following may still be required:

  • A photo ID upload is required
  • A property manager must be designated
  • The currently designated property manager is ineligible because their Civics account is for a company. Only individual natural persons are eligible.
  • The currently designated property manager is ineligible because their address is outside Monroe County.
  • LLC disclosure upload is required

  • When filling out a BOR application:
    • Click 'select site' to launch a popup window where you will search for the address.
    • Enter the street number in the top left box. 
    • Enter the street name in the box below the street number. 'Don’t touch the other boxes'.
    • Make sure there are no spaces before or after your text entries before clicking search.
  • If your property has an address range, we recommend searching for the lowest address in the range. For example, for 100-110 State St, search for 100 State St.
  • The results will show every address and sub-address associated with the parcel. Select any of the addresses to proceed.
  • Even though it may look like you are only registering for a portion of the property, the BOR will be completed for the entire property as long as you have selected one address on the tax parcel.

  • If the property owner initiated the BOR and invited you as property manager, you can locate the BOR application from the Civics homepage under the My Records section. Open the record and find the applicants section, click on it and you can remove yourself as a contact. Scroll down to the bottom and click submit to finalize your removal.
  • If you initiated the BOR: There is no way for you to remove yourself at this time. Instead, the property owner or new property manager should submit a new BOR. Once it is complete, it will overwrite the old BOR and the new manager will be listed. If, for some reason, you have an urgent need to be removed, please email CivicsTechSupport@CityofRochester.gov with a list of the addresses for which you need to be removed and staff can remove you from the system backend. Please provide up to 3 business days to receive a response.

  • The information submitted via the BOR will be used to link you to properties to compute your portfolio average score. It will also link you to other property owners or property managers using the same mailing address, phone number, etc. It will consider such linked identities as 1 entity for scoring purposes, and all the properties owned or managed by these identities will be averaged together.

Click here for Background on the Scoring System