North Bergen rent control: maximum rent increase (2026)
Hudson County — Rent Control Ordinance No. 467-93, as amended (PDF). Full ordinance text ↗
Summary
- Cap formula
- the percentage change in CPI for the region including North Bergen, measured 3 months before lease expiration versus the date the previous lease term commenced, capped at 2.5%
- Frequency
- Cost-of-living increases are limited to one such increase, if otherwise justified, in any 12-month period (Section 5(d) of Ordinance No. 467-93).
- Notice required
- Any landlord seeking a rent increase shall notify the tenant and the Rent Leveling Board in writing by certified mail, return receipt requested, specifically setting forth the reasons for and calculations involved in the proposed increase; oral notices are not permitted and are null and void (Section 6, as amended by Ordinance No. 623-96). The ordinance does not specify a minimum number of days before the increase's effective date.
- Who's covered
- All residential rental units (1 or more)
- Exemptions
- motels
- hotels
- owner-occupied dwellings with 3 units or fewer
- units accepted into a governmental affordable housing program where the owner receives a grant, subsidized loan, or government funds to rehabilitate the unit or subsidize the tenant's rent (Amendment 602-96)
- new construction (30 yrs from certificate of occupancy, N.J.S.A. 2A:42-84.2)
- Registration
- Every landlord who owns a regulated dwelling must file a registration schedule with the Rent Leveling Board listing each unit of housing space, the base rent charged for each unit beginning 1972, the current Base Rent, the current Approved Rent, and the current total rent charged (including any Rent Concessions), signed and certified as accurate by the landlord or agent (Section 4, as amended by Ordinance No. 46-10). If a landlord is not in compliance, the Rent Leveling Officer may establish a base rent using controlled rentals of comparable units, and the landlord bears the burden of proving any unregistered rent or increase is permitted.
- Surcharges
- Increases/surcharges for hardship, capital improvement, or "rental unit preservation" (Section 11) may be approved.
- Penalties
- Any person convicted of a willful violation of any provision of the ordinance, including the willful filing of a material misstatement of fact, is subject to a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $1,000, imprisonment for a term not to exceed 90 days, and/or community service not to exceed 90 days, at the Magistrate's discretion; each violation affecting more than one unit of housing space is a separate violation, as is each excess-rent demand; imprisonment up to 90 days or community service may also be imposed in default of payment of a fine (Section 16).
- Status
- active
- Confidence
- high
- Last verified
- 2026-09-23
Calculate your maximum increase
Official summary
We haven't yet verified this cap against the ordinance text itself. The state's summary of North Bergen's ordinance reads:
No greater than the percentage difference between the CPI for the region that includes North Bergen 3 months prior to expiration of the lease and the CPI at the date that the previous lease term commenced, not to exceed 2.5%.NJ Department of Community Affairs, 2026 Rent Control Survey — nj.gov
Ordinance: Rent Control Ordinance No. 467-93, as amended (PDF) — https://www.northbergen.org/_Content/pdf/Rent-Control-Ordinance.pdf
State survey entry
- Units covered
- 1+
- Exceptions
- Exception(s) - Motels, hotels, owner-occupied dwellings with 3 units or fewer; any unit accepted into a governmental affordable housing program under which the owner receives either a grant, subsidized loan, or government funds to rehabilitate the unit or subsidize the tenant's rent (Amendment 602-96).
Source: NJ Department of Community Affairs, 2026 Rent Control Survey — nj.gov
Open questions
- Full 31-page ordinance record (Ordinance No. 467-93 and its amendments: 546-94, 602-96, 623-96, 46-10, 62-10, 160-13, 174-13) was obtained and reviewed via OCR of the scanned PDF at the code_url. It contains no vacancy decontrol provision; unlike most other NJ rent-controlled towns, rent for a newly re-rented unit in North Bergen remains subject to the ordinance's controlled-increase formula (Section 5) rather than resetting to market rate upon vacancy, so vacancy_decontrol is left null rather than describing a mechanism that does not exist in the text.
- The previously recorded notice.days value of 30 (sourced from a secondary municipal web page) is not supported by the primary ordinance text (Section 6, as amended by Ordinance No. 623-96), which requires certified-mail notice with calculations but sets no specific day count; notice.days has been corrected to null accordingly.
- Ordinance No. 62-10 (landlord security-bond-against-tenant-disorder ordinance) was also found in the same PDF but is unrelated to rent control/rent leveling and was not used for any field in this record.
Rent board
Rent Control Office · (201) 392-2047 · https://www.northbergen.org/departments/rent-control
Generate a rent increase notice
Fill in the tenant, unit, and rent details and get a printable, ordinance-cited rent increase notice for North Bergen — $9, pay by card.
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