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New Jersey rental application rules to know

• •Since May 1, 2026, New Jersey caps rental application fees at $50 per applicant (A4899, P.L. 2025 c.405). The cap is a total-cost limit, it bundles the credit check, background check, and any admin or processing charge, and it is adjusted for inflation each year. Rentals in single-family and two-family homes are exempt.
• •Security deposits are capped at 1.5 times the monthly rent (N.J.S.A. 46:8-21.2). Any additional deposit a landlord collects in later years cannot raise your total by more than 10 percent a year.
• •Your deposit must be held in a New Jersey interest-bearing account (an insured money-market fund if the landlord has 10 or more units), and all the interest belongs to you, paid or credited toward rent every year with written notice of the bank and amount.
• •The landlord has 30 days after you move out to return the deposit with an itemized list of any deductions, and just 5 business days if you were displaced by fire, flood, condemnation, or evacuation (N.J.S.A. 46:8-21.1). Wrongful withholding costs the landlord double the amount kept, plus court costs and your attorney's fees.
• •Source of income is protected statewide under the Law Against Discrimination (N.J.S.A. 10:5-12), including Section 8 housing vouchers, and landlords must measure any income requirement against your share of the rent, not the full rent (P.L. 2025 c.251).
• •New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination is one of the broadest in the country. Beyond the federal classes it protects age, marital, civil-union, and domestic-partnership status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, nationality, ancestry, source of lawful income, and liability for military service.
• •Under the Fair Chance in Housing Act (N.J.S.A. 46:8-52 et seq., effective January 1, 2022), a landlord may not ask about or consider your criminal history before making a conditional offer, with two narrow exceptions (a lifetime sex-offender registration requirement and a conviction for making methamphetamine on federally assisted premises), so this form leaves the question off. After a conditional offer they may weigh only certain convictions within set lookback windows (6 years for first-degree, 4 years for second or third-degree, 1 year for fourth-degree crimes) and never arrests without conviction or expunged records.
• •Landlords must give every tenant the state's annually updated Truth in Renting guide to tenant and landlord rights (N.J.S.A. 46:8-46), except buildings with two or fewer rental units or owner-occupied buildings with three or fewer units.

Last reviewed 2026-07-15. General information, not legal advice.