How signals are grouped
A signal is one kind of change: a permit issued, a property sold, a violation opened. There are 46 of them.
Forty-six chips would be unreadable, so everywhere you see a filter they are collected into thirteen groups. The groups are the same on the map, on a watcher, in the builder's menu, and as the coloured pills in your digest, and each one keeps its colour across all of them. A permits watcher reads green in your inbox and green on the screen.
The groups do not overlap, and together they cover everything, so a count on one chip is never also counted on another.
Not every region carries every signal. What a region can produce depends on what that jurisdiction publishes and in what form. The coverage box on the map lists what is live in a given region, and the watcher builder only offers what your chosen regions can actually produce. See Coverage.
On the way up
Investment, work, and money moving in.
Building permits, through their life. An application is intent, an issue is a job about to start, and a final is a job signed off. The record usually carries a declared job value, a contractor and a work description.
Building permit application filed · Building permit issued · Building permit finaled · Building permit reactivatedDemolition permits, separated from building permits because they mean the opposite thing about a site. A demolition issued is a structure coming down; a demolition finaled is a cleared lot, which is often the earliest possible sign of what comes next.
Demolition permit application filed · Demolition permit issued · Demolition completed, lot cleared · Demolition permit reactivatedA certificate of occupancy issued: the building is legally usable. It is the end of a construction cycle and the start of an occupied one, so it is the moment a new tenant, a new operator or a new set of service needs appears.
Certificate of occupancy issuedWork has actually begun, where a jurisdiction publishes that separately from the permit. A permit issued means somebody may build; this means somebody is building.
Construction commencedA recorded transfer of the property, with the price where the record carries one. New ownership is the single most reliable predictor of work in the following months.
Property saleRezonings, variances, subdivisions, conditional use and site plan cases. Filed is somebody asking; decided is the answer. These run months to years ahead of any permit, so they are the earliest signal in the corpus.
Land-use case filed · Land-use case decidedInspection outcomes against a permit or a case. A run of passes is a job progressing on schedule; a failure is a job that has stopped and needs something.
Inspection passed · Inspection failedOn the way down
Enforcement, arrears and distress. These are the signals that reach an owner under pressure, and they are the sharpest thing in the corpus for anybody whose business is on that side.
Code enforcement cases while they are open. Opened is the case starting, reinspected is the jurisdiction coming back to look, and referred is it escalating to formal enforcement. Cases that close move to Resolved & closed.
Code violation opened · Code violation reinspection · Code violation referred for enforcementUnpaid property tax, through the whole escalation. It starts as a balance, grows, becomes a suit, becomes a judgment, gets scheduled for sale, and is sold. Each step is a separate signal, so you can watch the beginning or only the point of no return.
Tax delinquency opened · Tax delinquency reopened · Tax delinquency balance increased · Tax suit filed · Tax judgment entered · Tax sale scheduled · Sold at tax saleMortgage foreclosure, on the same shape as tax: filed, judgment, sale scheduled, sold. Filed is the earliest point at which an owner is reachable and the outcome is not yet settled.
Foreclosure filed · Foreclosure judgment entered · Sheriff sale scheduled · Sold at sheriff saleThe property has been flagged vacant by the jurisdiction. Where a region runs a vacant property register, this is the entry onto it.
Property flagged vacantThe structure has been declared unfit or unsafe. It is the most severe standing condition a property can carry, and it usually precedes either a substantial rebuild or a demolition.
Property condemnedResolved & closed
The thirteenth group is everything that ends, reverses or lapses. A violation resolved, a delinquency cured, a condemnation lifted, a permit expired or cancelled, a stop-work order.
These sit apart from the group they belong to so the other chips can answer "what is still open" without a closure being counted as an opening. A violation resolved is not a violation.
It is worth following in its own right. A cured delinquency or a lifted condemnation is an owner who has just found money or just finished work, and a stop-work order is a job that has hit a problem.
Code violation resolved · Tax delinquency cured · Tax delinquency redeemed · Foreclosure satisfied · Foreclosure discontinued · Property no longer vacant · Condemnation lifted · Building permit expired · Building permit cancelled · Stop-work order issued · Certificate of occupancy revoked · Demolition permit expired · Demolition permit cancelled · Demolition stop-work order issued · Demolition intendedSignals and standing conditions
Four of these describe a state rather than a moment: tax delinquency, vacancy, condemnation and foreclosure. A property is delinquent for as long as the balance is unpaid.
So they appear twice, and the difference is worth knowing. On a watcher and on the map they behave like every other signal: you get the event when the state changes. On a property page they appear as pills at the top rather than as rows in the record list, with the amount owed or the case reference, and cleared ones stay in the past tense.
They are deliberately absent from a property's timeline strip. The only date a condition carries is when we observed it, so plotting them would draw a decade-old delinquency as something that happened last week.
Which signals carry a value
The value filter on a watcher reads the dollar figure on the record itself. Permits carry a declared job value, sales carry a price, and tax and foreclosure records usually carry an amount.
Most violations, occupancy certificates, inspections and land-use cases carry none, and a record with no value does not pass a value range. So a watcher with a minimum set returns mostly permits and sales. That is usually the intent, and it is worth knowing before concluding that a signal has gone quiet.