What are NJ condo owners paying in special assessments under the 2025 reserve law?

What are NJ condo owners paying in special assessments under the 2025 reserve law?

Condo owners in New Jersey are receiving special assessments ranging from $15,000 to $130,000 in 2026, driven by the state's 2025 reserve fund legislation requiring engineering reviews and fully funded capital reserves. Buyers who do proper due diligence during attorney review can negotiate seller credits to cover these assessments at closing. Those who do not can inherit five and six-figure obligations they never budgeted for.

By Scott Selleck | May 4, 2026

The number that should stop every Bergen County and Hudson County condo buyer cold is this one.

Fifteen thousand to one hundred thirty thousand dollars.

That is the live range of special assessments hitting condo owners across northern New Jersey right now. Not over a decade. Right now, in 2026, as a direct result of the 2025 condo reserve law and the engineering reviews it triggered.

If you are shopping a condo anywhere from Weehawken up through Fort Lee, this is the conversation you need to have with yourself before you make an offer. The video below walks through the exact case where one of my buyers turned this risk into a five-year zero-assessment win at closing.

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Why these assessments are landing now

The 2025 New Jersey condo reserve legislation did two things that changed every condo association in the state.

First, it required associations to commission engineering reviews of their buildings. Roofs. Facades. Garage decks. HVAC. Plumbing risers. The structural and mechanical systems that age out on a schedule whether the board wants to deal with them or not.

Second, it required associations to maintain fully funded capital reserves. Not the 10% reserve thresholds that were the loose standard before. Real reserves built around the cost of the actual capital projects the engineering review identifies.

The result is exactly what you would expect. Across Bergen and Hudson County right now, association boards are sitting in monthly meetings working through the same math. Here is what the engineer found. Here is what it costs to fix. Here is the gap between what we have in reserves and what we need.

That gap becomes a special assessment. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLChFni6hLE&t=20s">Watch me explain how the law shifted the responsibility to associations at 0:20</a>.

Some buildings are landing at the low end of the range. A $15,000 to $25,000 assessment per unit, payable over a few years, for one or two specific projects.

Others are landing at the top. $80,000, $100,000, $130,000 per unit. Older buildings with deferred maintenance. Waterfront buildings exposed to weather and salt. Buildings where the prior board kicked the can.

The buyer who closes on a unit one week before that assessment is approved owns it. The buyer who closes one week after, with proper attorney review, can be released from it entirely.

That is the difference proper due diligence makes.

The exact documents to request during attorney review

This is the package every condo buyer in New Jersey should be requesting through their attorney during the attorney review window. Not after. Not later. During.

• Two to four years of financial statements. You want to see the trend, not just the snapshot.
• The current operating budget. Including any line items for capital improvements or assessment income.
• Six months of board meeting minutes, minimum. Twelve months is better. This is where projects get discussed, debated, and approved.
• The reserve fund study. This is the engineering review the 2025 law requires. It tells you exactly what is coming.
• The association's by-laws and governing documents. Including any rules about pet ownership, rentals, alterations, and assessment collection.
• Any approved or pending special assessments. In writing.
• Closed-session meeting minutes if the association maintains them. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLChFni6hLE&t=130s">Watch me explain why closed-session minutes matter at 2:10</a>.

That last one is where the real money is hiding.

Some associations have a policy that allows them to keep certain meeting discussions in closed session. Pending litigation. Sensitive financial decisions. Discussions about contractor bids on capital projects. The kind of thing that meaningfully affects unit value but is not in the standard document package the management company sends out.

In one of my recent Edgewater transactions, the association allowed buyers to come into the management office in person to review those closed-session minutes. My buyer Jay went. He read everything. He took notes.

What he found was the difference between a $30,000 to $40,000 assessment and a $100,000 assessment over the next phase of work.

That changed the entire transaction.

If you are shopping a condo in Edgewater, Fort Lee, Weehawken, West New York, or anywhere along the Hudson River corridor, this is exactly the kind of advisory work I run with my buyers before we ever write an offer. Schedule a buyer consultation at SelleckSellsNJ.com or call or text me directly at 201-970-3960.

How to turn the information into a credit at closing

Once you have the real number, the negotiation becomes simple.

Three things have to line up. The seller has to agree to credit the assessment amount. The lender has to agree to allow that credit to be applied at closing. The association has to agree to release the seller from any future obligation tied to that assessment.

When all three line up, the buyer walks into the unit with no assessment overhang. The seller walks away clean. The association gets paid in full at closing.

In Jay's transaction, that combination produced five years of zero assessment payments for him as the new owner. The credit was applied directly toward the pending capital improvement obligation at the closing table.

That outcome did not happen because we got lucky. It happened because three things were in place.

A buyer who was willing to do the work and read the actual documents. An attorney with 35-plus years of New Jersey real estate experience who knew exactly what to request and how to structure the credit. A real estate agent who has been through enough of these transactions to know which questions to ask and which red flags to watch for.

Charles Arakelian and I bring close to 70 combined years to a condo deal. That is not a sales line. That is the depth this kind of transaction requires in 2026.

You can read the full Edgewater case study, including the client's own Google review describing the experience, at the companion blog post on the Hudson River condo law. This post is the framework. That post is the case study.

What this means if you are shopping right now

Every building is different. Some Hudson and Bergen County associations are already in solid shape. Their boards have been disciplined for years and the engineering review confirmed what they already knew. Their assessments, if any, will be modest.

Other buildings are in a much harder position. Aging infrastructure. Underfunded reserves. Engineering reviews that came back with six and seven-figure project lists. Those are the buildings where the assessment range gets ugly.

The only way to know which category you are walking into is to look. Document by document. Page by page.

Three categories of buyer typically run into trouble.

The first is the buyer who skips attorney review entirely. New Jersey gives you that window for a reason. Use it.

The second is the buyer who relies entirely on the seller's disclosure and the standard management company package. Those documents are useful, but they are not the full picture. The full picture lives in the meeting minutes and the engineering review.

The third is the buyer who goes under contract emotionally and is no longer willing to walk away. Once that happens, your leverage is gone. You will rationalize whatever the building shows you because you have already moved in mentally.

The buyers who get this right keep their leverage until the documents check out. That is the entire game.

What to do before you make an offer on any NJ condo right now

Three steps before you write the offer.

1. Confirm with your agent that they have closed condo transactions in New Jersey under the 2025 reserve law. Not just any transactions. These transactions.
2. Confirm your real estate attorney is engaged and ready to request the full document package the moment you go under contract.
3. Decide in advance what your maximum acceptable assessment exposure is, and be willing to walk if the documents reveal more than that.

The buildings will keep showing up on Zillow. Pier Village condos. Edgewater high-rises. Fort Lee towers. Weehawken waterfronts. Some of them are excellent buys. Some of them are six-figure traps wearing waterfront views as camouflage.

The framework is the same in every one of them.

If you are ready to shop with that framework in place, call or text me at 201-970-3960. I will walk you through how my buyer advisory process works and what we look at before we ever write an offer. You can also start the conversation at SelleckSellsNJ.com or delphi.ai/scottselleck.

About Scott Selleck

Scott Selleck is a REALTOR® and SRES® with The Selleck Group at KW City Views Realty, based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. With 34 years of experience, over 500 closed transactions, and more than $2 billion in career sales volume, Scott specializes in Bergen and Hudson County real estate, waterfront and high-rise condo transactions, and NJ to Florida relocation through The Northeast-Florida Advisory Group. Reach Scott at 201-970-3960, [email protected], or SelleckSellsNJ.com. Connect anytime at delphi.ai/scottselleck.