Long Island City.

A glass tower with 500 units and 40 open violations averages 0.08 per unit — extremely low — but the headline number 'forty' can look alarming next to a 20-unit walk-up with 8 violations (0.4 per unit, five times worse). Always read per-unit, not absolute. The audit shows unit counts so the math is transparent.

Yes during the abatement term. Many LIC towers built under 421-a are stabilized for the duration of the tax benefit — typically 15-25 years. Several of the earliest waterfront 421-a buildings are now in their final years of stabilization. The audit shows the building's tax-abatement status and DHCR registration; the lease addendum on a stabilized 421-a unit must disclose the expiration year.

The entire 11109 waterfront strip sits in FEMA Zone AE — high-risk flood zone with a defined 100-year base flood elevation. The post-rezoning towers were built to elevated floodproofing standards. If you're buying or renting in 11109, the audit pulls the specific zone and any post-Sandy DOB filings; flood insurance is essentially required for any ground-floor exposure.

A handful of larger waterfront and Queens Plaza towers carry significant open-violation histories — some tied to construction-defect suits, others to façade-repair filings or elevator outages. The list below ranks the LIC buildings in our index by current open count; the worst BBL is meaningfully more concerning than the next several, so don't average across the neighborhood.

On open-violation counts per unit, yes — LIC buildings average dramatically lower than Astoria, Jackson Heights, or Corona walk-ups. But two caveats: (1) several specific LIC towers have outsize violation counts, so check the BBL; (2) newer construction is not automatically defect-free — 2010s-era LIC has its share of façade and elevator suits worth checking individually.