South Orange rent control: maximum rent increase (2026)
Essex County — Chapter 254, Rental Property. Full ordinance text ↗
Maximum rent increase
5.5% per year
Maximum rent increase of 5.5% (per DCA survey; ordinance text not independently verified).
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Summary
- Cap formula
- Maximum rent increase of 5.5% (per DCA survey; ordinance text not independently verified).
- Frequency
- Not on file — check the ordinance
- Notice required
- Not on file — check the ordinance
- Who's covered
- Buildings with 3 or more units
- Exemptions
- 1-family rentals where lessor is not the landlord
- owner-occupied homes of 3 units or less
- units used as professional offices or retail establishments
- motels, hotels, rooming houses, or similar establishments
- new construction (30 yrs from certificate of occupancy, N.J.S.A. 2A:42-84.2)
- Vacancy decontrol
- Vacancy Decontrol (until re-rented).
- Status
- active
- Confidence
- medium
- Last verified
- 2026-09-23
Official summary
We haven't yet verified this cap against the ordinance text itself. The state's summary of South Orange's ordinance reads:
≤5.5%NJ Department of Community Affairs, 2026 Rent Control Survey — nj.gov
Ordinance: Chapter 254, Rental Property — https://southorange.municipalcodeonline.com/book?type=ordinances#name=Ch_254_Rental_Property
State survey entry
- Units covered
- 3+
- Exceptions
- Exception(s) - 1-family rentals where lessor is not the landlord, owner-occupied homes of 3 units or less, units used as professional offices or retail establishments, motels, hotels, rooming houses, or similar establishments.
Vacancy Decontrol (until re-rented)
Source: NJ Department of Community Affairs, 2026 Rent Control Survey — nj.gov
Open questions
- Ordinance text not yet verified against the municipal code. Attempts via the r.jina.ai proxy (returned only the site's interface template, not article content), the Wayback Machine (fetch blocked), a direct PDF fetch of southorange.org's 2023 Chapter 254 amending ordinance (returned only raw compressed PDF binary, not extractable text), and web search (did not surface the operative 5.5% clause) all failed to return readable primary-source text for Chapter 254. DCA survey values are used as the sole basis for this record.
Rent board
Rent Leveling Board · (973) 378-7715 · https://www.southorange.org/370/Tenants