Glossary

Property-record terms, defined in context.

Definitions explain how terms appear in real Washington, DC public-record systems without turning context into legal conclusions.

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Terms in context

Use these definitions to interpret D.C. property records and follow each concept back to its source system.

Assessed value

Assessed value is a value reported in a property tax assessment for a stated tax year and stage. It should not be presented as an undated estimate of current market value.

Assessment stage

Assessment stage describes where a property value sits in the tax assessment cycle. Prior, current, and proposed values belong to different periods and must remain labeled.

Assessor sale history

Assessor sale history is transaction information carried in an assessor or tax-system dataset. It can support property research, but it is not a complete deed index or chain of title.

Building permit

A building permit is an agency record for authorized or reviewed work under the permit program. Permit issuance does not prove that work was completed or that a property now complies with every code requirement.

Business license

A business license is an agency record of licensed activity under a licensing program. A license reported at an address does not prove property ownership, a current lease, or tenant occupancy.

Parcel number and APN

Parcel number and assessor's parcel number, or APN, are general names for local property identifiers. Washington, DC property tax records commonly use SSL instead.

Property link scope

Property link scope states how a source record relates to a property tax account. It prevents building, multi-parcel, and nearby records from being restated as exact parcel facts.

Property tax account

A property tax account is the entity used by the tax system to identify and administer taxable property interests. In Washington, DC, Quoin serves records around the account identified by SSL.

Source reference

A source reference is an opaque identifier that connects a returned fact to its source record, field, release, and property account. A client can expand it into provenance and a human verification route.

Source release

A source release is a fixed, identified version of a source dataset accepted into a product. Tying each fact to a release makes later research reproducible even when the live public portal changes.

Square and lot

Square and lot are parts of the local identifier used for Washington, DC property tax accounts. An optional suffix can also be present, which produces the full SSL.

SSL

SSL means Square, Suffix, and Lot. Washington, DC uses the identifier for property tax accounts, and Quoin keeps the normalized SSL with each resolved account.