Rental registration in Atlantic City, NJ

Within 30 days of occupancy or of purchase, every owner or rental agent must register with the Office of Landlord-Tenant Affairs and apply for an inspection of the premises for city code violations. The legal base rent is established at that point.

This is a closing task, not an annual one: the base rent from which every future increase is computed is fixed at registration, so registering late means arguing about the starting figure later. Annual registration is $30, a reinspection $15, and there is a $30 surcharge once payment is 30 days overdue. An owner aged 65 or over living in one unit of a two-family and qualifying under N.J.S.A. 54:4-8.41 pays nothing. Each unregistered leasehold is a separate violation.

Fee per unit

$30

The Landlord Identity Law requires a certificate of registration for every residential rental — filed with the municipal clerk for a one-unit rental or a non-owner-occupied two-unit premises, and with the DCA's Bureau of Housing Inspection for a multiple dwelling of three or more units. Until it is filed no judgment for possession may be entered: the court continues the case for up to 90 days and then dismisses it.

Registration reaches a one-unit rental and a two-family alike, and the exemption is narrower than it looks. N.J.S.A. 46:8-27 excludes owner-occupied two-unit premises from the definition of "landlord" — but N.J.S.A. 46:8-28.5 separately requires every owner of a tenant-occupied one- or two-family property, expressly including a two-family with one owner-occupied unit, to register with the Bureau of Housing Inspection, unless the property is certified free of lead-based paint, was constructed in or after 1978, or is a seasonal rental let for under six months a year.

The registration is filed within 30 days, or at the creation of the first tenancy in a newly built or reconstructed building, and a copy of the certificate goes to every tenant — again at the creation of each new tenancy, and within seven days of any amendment. An amended certificate is due within 20 days of a change, which for a buyer means the closing itself: a new owner is a change. No tenant can waive any of this. Treat it as a closing task rather than a filing to catch up on later, because the sanction is not the fee — it is that an eviction cannot be completed until the record is right, and the court's 90-day continuance is the whole of the remedy.

Unit counts

1+ units

Owner-occupied exemption

No