An Essex County home inspector has built a free website that lets anyone look up the public records behind a New Jersey property &mdash; building permits, flood zones, fire history, property taxes, and more &mdash; by typing in an address.
The site, Permit &amp; Parcel (oprasearch.app), covers all 564 New Jersey municipalities and pulls only from official sources: state and county databases, FEMA flood maps, and the towns' own municipal codes. There's no account, no email capture, and no cost.
"I kept watching buyers fall in love with a house before anyone checked the paper trail &mdash; the open permits, the flood zone, what the town actually requires when a home changes hands," said Leo Betancor, a Certified Master Inspector based in Cedar Grove and the founder of the site. "All of that is public record. It just wasn't in one place anyone could actually use."
Alongside the main lookup, the site includes free single-purpose tools: a lead-safe inspection lookup showing which of the two state-required inspection methods each town uses under New Jersey's lead paint law, a searchable directory of every DCA-certified lead evaluation and abatement contractor sorted by distance, a fire-incident map built from more than 40 years of state fire records, and a radon map covering every municipality.
A companion site, njflood.zone, gives instant FEMA flood-zone answers for any New Jersey address &mdash; built after the federal government shutdown left FEMA's own map site unreliable &mdash; running on the site's own servers with the complete flood map data for the state loaded locally.
The project was recently featured in <a href="https://www.tapinto.net/towns/east-hanover-slash-florham-park/columns/at-home-with-holly/articles/deep-dive-conversations-what-the-house-won-t-tell-you" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">TAPinto</a>'s "At Home with Holly" column. Both sites are free at <a href="https://oprasearch.app" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">oprasearch.app</a> and <a href="https://njflood.zone" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">njflood.zone</a>.

Essex County

Eric Kiefer

New York City Metropolitan Area

Montclair

New Jersey

Cedar Grove Home Inspector Builds Free Property...

An Essex County home inspector has built a free website that lets anyone look up the public records behind a New Jersey property — building permits...

Cedar Grove Home Inspector Builds Free Property-Records Lookup for Every NJ Town

Ocean County

Lakewood

Karen Wall

Toms River

Brick

Point Pleasant

Monmouth County

Howell

Sara Winick

Wall

Veronica Flesher

Berkeley

Manchester

Carly Baldwin

Manasquan-Belmar

Lacey

Ocean

Leisure Village

Ocean County Library, Toms River

An outdoor book sale will be held during the Downtown Toms River Comfort Food Festival, Sept. 19, from noon until 3 p.m. Many books, CDS, DVDs, etc. CASH ONLY. Proceeds of the sale benefit library programs for children and adults.

Local Event: Friends of the Library Book Sale

Friends of the Library Book Sale

An outdoor book sale will be held during the Downtown Toms River Comfort Food Festival, Sept. 19, from noon until 3 p.m. Many...

🌱 Friends of the Library Book Sale and 11 more...

Also check out Understanding Trauma, the Nervous System, and Workplace Skills on the Leisure Village Patch calendar

🌱 Friends of the Library Book Sale and 11 more events

Community Corner

Also, don’t miss Soup Cooking Class with The Innkeeper on the Leisure Village Patch calendar

Nearby Communities

State Edition

National Edition

Discover more in Leisure Village

Find and sell treasures, hire and offer services. All in your community

Montclair, NJ|Local Classified|Announcement|4h

Cedar Grove Home Inspector Builds Free Property-Records Lookup for Every NJ Town

Friends of the Library Book Sale