Rental registration in Montclair, NJ

Every covered dwelling registers its base rent annually on 1 April, at $10 per dwelling unit. A late notice costs $20 a unit, and failing to file within 45 days of the Rent Control Officer's notice prohibits any rent increase until it is filed.

In addition to the statewide registration under N.J.S.A. 46:8-27, not instead of it. The other fees are worth knowing because they price the routes out of the 4%: a legal rent determination is $25 a unit, an appeal of the Rent Control Officer $100, a capital-improvement or service increase $250 a unit and a hardship application $300 a unit. A substantial-compliance certification from the township must accompany the annual increase notice itself, and a tenant who successfully contests that certification voids the increase.

Fee per unit

$10

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