How to Find Buildings That Need Local Law 97 Compliance

To find buildings that need Local Law 97 compliance, download the Covered Buildings List that the NYC Department of Buildings publishes for each filing year. The DOB says most buildings over 25,000 square feet must meet the law's emissions limits. The list records them one building at a time, so your market arrives already named.

From there the method is short. Filter the list to the building sizes and types your crews handle well. Find the owner-side person who controls capital spending at each property. Then open the conversation months before the owner's next emissions report is due.

My team and I run outbound for B2B companies, construction firms among them, so I stay on the prospecting side. Whether a specific building is covered, and what it has to do, is for the owner and their advisers to confirm. Nothing here is legal advice.

What counts as a building performance standard?

A building performance standard, or BPS, is a law that requires owners of existing commercial and multifamily buildings to reach a set performance level by a deadline. ENERGY STAR says a BPS in general contains a performance target and a timeframe by which all buildings must meet it. Depending on the jurisdiction, the target can cover energy use, emissions, electrification, renewable energy or water.

The word that matters for a contractor is "existing." These laws create retrofit work on buildings that already stand: heating and cooling plant, controls, metering, lighting and the envelope.

That changes the buyer. On new construction you chase a spec through architects and general contractors. Under a BPS, the buyer is whoever holds the building's capital budget, and a regulator's deadline gives that person a reason to read your email.

If your service changes how much energy a standing building uses or how much it emits, a BPS jurisdiction is your market. If you only bid new-build work, these laws will add little to your pipeline.

Which cities and states have building performance standards?

There is no single national rule. A city, county or state passes each BPS, with its own thresholds, dates and penalties. The Institute for Market Transformation explains what a building performance standard is and how jurisdictions design and implement one. Its description is useful: standards that cut building carbon through better energy, gas, water and peak-demand performance, and that tighten over time.

Outside New York and Washington, start with the cities already enforcing. An ACEEE Summer Study paper listed by the National BPS Coalition tracks compliance progress in New York City, St. Louis, Denver, Boston and Washington, DC. Each of those has its own covered-building list to pull from.

The tightening matters for sales. A building that clears today's limit can fail the next one, so the market stays open after the first deadline passes.

Two programs show how far the models differ:

Washington's Tier 1 page has two details a contractor can use. Federal and tribally owned buildings are exempt, so take them off a Washington list. Commerce also points owners to a directory of qualified persons and energy auditors. If you are on it, or partner with someone who is, say so in the first message.

Then pick your geography, and go local when you can. An owner reads a message differently when the contractor is a short drive away and can walk the plant room next week. A national "buildings under a BPS" list also fails on accuracy: with different thresholds and dates everywhere, one opening line cannot be true for every reader.

Start where a BPS is in force, your crews can be on site, and the regulator publishes a covered-building list. Work that market fully before you add a second one.

How do you find buildings that need Local Law 97 compliance?

The DOB publishes a fresh Covered Buildings List for each filing year, and the 2026 list is the one to work from now. Two identifiers help you read it. A BBL is the tax lot, named by borough, block and lot. A BIN is the Building Identification Number for one physical building.

The DOB's covered buildings FAQ says each building has its own compliance pathway and must report under it, even when another building on the same tax lot follows a different pathway. A pathway is the set of rules a building reports under. Where the DOB has no building-specific information, the building appears under Compliance Pathway 0. Most covered buildings fall under Article 320, an annual carbon cap. Article 321 mainly covers certain affordable housing, buildings with more than 35% rent-regulated units and houses of worship, and NYC Accelerator says those buildings either complete a list of 13 prescriptive energy conservation measures or meet their 2030 limit. For a contractor, that list is a scope already written.

Turn the list into a prospect file:

1. Download the current filing-year list and keep every column.
2. Count each BIN as one row in your market. A tax lot with 3 buildings is 3 buildings, often with one owner behind them.
3. Group buildings by pathway, so your first message never assumes the wrong requirements.
4. Flag Pathway 0 buildings separately. The city lacks detail there, so the owner may be the only person who knows what applies.
5. Filter by size and building type to the work you deliver well.
6. Use benchmarking data to choose the segment you open with.

For step 6, ENERGY STAR's policy brief describes the Portfolio Manager Data Explorer. It shows performance trends for buildings benchmarked in Portfolio Manager and filters by building group. That answers a segment question, such as which building types tend to perform worse.

The individual buildings still come from the regulator's list. In New York, that list is public: the NYC Department of Buildings publishes a 2026 Covered Buildings List with its records of buildings required to file under Local Law 97 in 2026.

Coverage tells you the owner must report and meet limits, not what work the building needs. The pressure is building, though: NYC Accelerator says fewer than 10% of properties were over their 2024-2029 cap on 2024 benchmarking data, and about 57% are projected to exceed the 2030-2034 limits. Two neighbors on the list can need completely different retrofits, or none.

Who decides on retrofit work inside a covered building?

The list gives you buildings. Buildings do not reply - people do. At each one you want two people: the one who controls the money and the one who knows the plant room.

Start with your own past projects and write down who actually signed them. That answer beats any generic title list, because it comes from deals you closed. Use the titles your buyers really hold. A vague "manager" pulled from a data tool because it sounded senior only wastes sends.

Who signs depends on who owns the building. A peer-reviewed study of office asset managers found that ownership type and local market shape the retrofit decision. So a REIT, a family owner and a fund will not route your proposal the same way.

Money decides it too. A Better Buildings partner case study says retrofit proposals get rejected for long paybacks, for looking too complicated, or because the capital was never underwritten when the asset was bought. Reach the person who controls the capital plan, not only the one who runs the building. As a starting map for owner-managed commercial and multifamily property:

Owner and operator are often different companies. One entity owns the building and a third-party firm runs it. Find both: the management firm knows the building, and the owner pays for the work.

Drop titles that rarely touch capital spending: assistants, associates, coordinators, leasing staff, and any "Manager" with no building or portfolio attached. If you can only find one person per building, make it the one with the budget.

City-owned work follows other rules: getting construction contracts with New York City runs through PASSPort and DDC prequalified lists.

How do you turn a covered-building list into contacts?

Treat the regulator's list as your whole market in that jurisdiction. Here you do not have to guess at your market. You can read it row by row, and every row comes with a dated reason to talk, a filing and a regulator's deadline, which makes it the kind of free trigger a small team can use. Elsewhere contractors buy construction project lead databases; here the regulator's list is public.

The list holds buildings, so getting to people takes a few steps:

1. Filter the list to your segment by size, type and pathway.
2. Group buildings by owner and management company. One owner holding a dozen BINs turns a single email into a portfolio conversation.
3. Search those companies for the titles in the map above.
4. Add 2 or 3 roles per owner, so one busy inbox does not decide whether you reach the building at all.
5. Verify every email address before the first send.
6. Personalize last: the building address, how many BINs that owner holds, and the pathway.

On verification, I run every address through a checker such as NeverBounce or DeBounce, and my rule is to keep bounces under 0.5% of sends. The sending setup behind that rule is covered in the deliverability and infrastructure FAQ, and list sizing in lists and targeting.

What should the first outreach message say?

Lead with the building and the rule. "Your building at [address] is on this year's covered list as its own BIN" shows you looked, and it earns the next line. The first email only has to start a short conversation.

A first email for this market needs 4 parts:

1. The building, by address, and the fact that it is covered.
2. One past job of yours in a similar building, with the building type and what you changed.
3. A small ask: 15 minutes to talk through where the building stands before the next filing.
4. Your name and where your company is based.

Part 2 carries the message. "We upgraded controls in a similar building type" means something to a chief engineer. A list of everything you offer tells them nothing about their building.

And expect the owner to look you up before replying. The decision follows that look, so your LinkedIn profile and website need a real case study with real numbers.

Reply rates swing a lot. One company got 2% from a message. Another got 7.5% from the same words. The sender made the difference. An average email from a contractor with a solid profile wins over a flawless one from someone with nothing to look up, every time.

Leave out the full service stack, savings figures and compliance promises. You have not seen the building's data, and the reader knows it. One test: if the email would read the same with another building's address pasted in, rewrite it, because a cold email that gets replies stays short and specific.

When should you start outreach around compliance deadlines?

Start early. A retrofit is a capital project, so expect the slow end of B2B buying, where decisions taking 6, 9 or 12 months are normal. First meetings can show up within a month of launch, yet the signed contract behind one of them often comes 4 months or more after that.

The timing follows the owner's capital plan. The Retrofit Playbook from NYSERDA, RMI and partners says high-cost energy conservation measures often become viable when bundled with other upgrades or timed with planned capital events. In a Natural Resources Canada case study, aligning retrofit measures with the owner's capital plan cut the simple payback period from about 10 years to under 4 years.

Run outbound for 3 months minimum before you judge it, and allow roughly 6 before it works at full strength.

Time each message to what is likely on the owner's desk:

When an owner says "not this year," the building stays in your market. Put it back into the sequence and come back before the next filing.

One message to a covered building is a lottery ticket. Plan 5 or 6 touches across LinkedIn outreach and cold email, with real gaps between them. In our campaigns the third follow-up is the one that most often gets an answer, so anyone who stops after one or two never reaches it.

All of this assumes one thing: someone at your company has time for the meetings and building walks the sequence creates. If nobody can take them, the leads go cold within weeks. Put one named person on the inbox so no reply gets missed.

A short checklist for BPS prospecting

1. Pick one jurisdiction with a BPS in force where your crews already work.
2. Pull the regulator's current covered-building list and filter it to your segment.
3. Write down who signed your past retrofit jobs and turn that into your title list.
4. Group buildings by owner, then find 2 or 3 people per owner.
5. Verify every email address before anything goes out.
6. Send a short first message built on the building, one similar job and a small ask.
7. Follow up across LinkedIn and email, timed to the filing calendar.

Before anything lands on your calendar, qualify once. Confirm the person owns or manages the building you named and can approve the spend, or will bring in someone who can. A friendly chief engineer at a building you cannot bid on costs you an afternoon.

Pull the current list, filter it to your segment, and start with the budget holders at the owners who hold the most BINs, then work down the list. Fix the list first. Then scale.

If you do retrofit or energy work in a covered city and want help turning the list into a first batch of owners, tell me your jurisdiction. Book a call.