City-Owned Properties
Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center Open Data · 2026 Full Details
Full Details
- Title
- City-Owned Properties
- Description
- # Overview These data contain city-owned properties from the eProperties Plus database. The data describe basic aspects of the property (square footage, location, identification, etc.) and its geographically based assignment of various components of city infrastructure (police zone, council district, etc.). --- # Motivation These data are useful for anyone (e.g., the URA) in identifying properties that are unused throughout the city. --- # Collection These data are taken directly from the city's property management system (EProperty) database, one of several independent systems used by the City to track property-level data. --- # Preprocessing The latitude and longitude for these properties have to be geocoded from the parcel identifier (that is, the latitude and longitude are not contained in the source data). The various geographic zones (police zone, etc.) are then reverse geocoded from the derived coordinates. The parcel identifiers in the source data can follow several syntax conventions. The original city-formatted parcel identifier is in the `parc` field, and the normalized version (using a uniform 16-character format) is in the `pin` field. The `id` and `census_tract` fields are categorical/not intended for mathematical operations and are therefore converted to strings. --- # Known Uses The URA uses this data for vacant-property identification. --- # Recommended Uses Users can analyze the location of city-owned vacant properties and the property size/classification. These can be used to understand zonal conditions (e.g., neighborhood conditions), concentrations of vacant land spanning zones (across two police zones), etc. Care should be taken, however, when inferring socioeconomic attributes, city resource allocation, or other higher level variables of interest. There may be a link between vacant land and these factors, but the complexities of city operations and high-order variables can be influenced by lurking/hidden/latent variables. It could be advantageous to consider multivariate models and/or construction of component variables (e.g., using PCA or Factor Analysis). The city is in the process of publishing other property-based datasets (all city-owned properties, treasury sale properties, condemned properties, and tax-delinquent properties). The city also publishes information on PLI code enforcement violations/permit applications which could be informative of property conditions in a given area. --- # Known Limitations/Biases These data describe only city-owned properties (not privately held properties). The city is currently (2023) overhauling its property management databases. These data represent the best descriptions of city-owned vacant properties that are currently available.
- Creator
- City of Pittsburgh
- Publisher
- Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center Open Data
- Subject
- Housing & Properties
- Temporal Coverage
- Last Modified: 2026-03-29
- Date Issued
- 2023-06-01
- Rights
- Creative Commons Attribution
- License
- http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-by
- Access Rights
- Public
- Language
- English
- Date Added
- March 31, 2026
- Provenance Statement
- The metadata for this resource was last retrieved from Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center Open Data on 2026-03-30.
Location
Links
Cite and Reference
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Citation
City of Pittsburgh (2023). City-Owned Properties. Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center Open Data. https://data.wprdc.org/dataset/city-owned-properties (dataset) -
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