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Building use

published · September 16, 2026

Building use is what a national address register declares a building is for — residential, commercial, mixed, industrial, institutional, agricultural or other — where the register publishes it.

Building use is what a national address register declares a building is for: residential, commercial, mixed, industrial, institutional, agricultural or other, read from the register's own category codes and never inferred from the address text.

What Spaw answers

building_use is filled only on a premise match against a register that publishes a use — the US National Address Database where the contributing authority filled its address type in, the Swiss building register's category and the Austrian register's building attributes as of 16 September 2026 — and is null everywhere else, including on a premise match in a register that carries positions but no use. is_multi_unit sits beside it: true when the register lists two or more flats or suites at the building, false only when the register declares its units and lists none, null when it lists one or carries no units at all.

What it is not

It is not the licensed residential delivery indicator. is_residential is what a postal service's own delivery-point data says and stays null until a partner is enabled; building_use is what the cadastre or the address authority recorded about the building. The two can differ, and the answer keeps them apart so nobody reads one as the other.

Related

markdown version: /glossary/building-use.md

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