# Building use

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.

Date: 2026-09-16

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.

Reference: https://spaw.co/glossary/building-use