New Jersey · Related laws

Miscellaneous & related New Jersey laws

Beyond the core community-association acts, a handful of broader New Jersey laws can still touch your community — and a few that people often assume apply, but don't. A quick orientation, with links to the statutes we host in full.

New Jersey statutes What applies — and what doesn't
Overview

HOPB hosts the full text of the New Jersey acts that govern condominium, cooperative and homeowners' associations — they are indexed in the New Jersey HOA Law Guide. This page covers the edges: general-purpose laws that aren't association statutes but can still reach your community, and a short list of laws that are commonly assumed to apply but do not.

Because these are broad statutes we don't reproduce in full, each entry below is a brief plain-language summary with its citation; the official text is available from the New Jersey Legislature.

Related laws that can apply

Broader laws that reach your community.

These are not part of the community-association acts indexed in the law guide, but each can bear on a New Jersey community, its developer, or its members in the right situation.

Limited immunity for community associationsN.J.S.A. 2A:62A-12 to -14

A quiet 1989 law that can decide whether an injured owner has a case at all. Where the bylaws of a qualified common interest community — residential, with at least four units (§ 2A:62A-12(f)) — specifically so provide, the association is not liable in a civil action brought by or on behalf of a unit owner for bodily injury to that owner occurring on the community's premises (§ 2A:62A-13(a)). “Unit owner” includes the owner's spouse, and “bodily injury” includes death (§ 2A:62A-12(e), (h)).

Two things limit it. The immunity never covers a willful, wanton or grossly negligent act or omission by the association (§ 2A:62A-13(b)). And the bylaw has to be adopted the hard way: it must be approved by the owners of at least two-thirds of the units held by owners other than the developer, and it applies only to injuries sustained on or after the date the bylaw takes effect (§ 2A:62A-14). It does not touch a guest's or a tenant's claim, or an owner's claim against anyone but the association. If you were hurt in a common area, read your bylaws before anything else.

New Jersey Consumer Fraud ActN.J.S.A. 56:8-1 et seq.

One of the strongest consumer-protection laws in the country. It bars unconscionable business practices, fraud, and misrepresentation in the sale of real estate, goods, and services — and a successful claim can recover treble (triple) damages plus attorney's fees (§ 56:8-19). For communities, it most often reaches a developer or sponsor who misrepresents a project, or a contractor or vendor who defrauds an owner or the association. Whether it also reaches an association's dealings with its own members is a question the statute does not answer: “merchandise” is defined broadly as “any objects, wares, goods, commodities, services or anything offered, directly or indirectly to the public for sale” (§ 56:8-1(c)), and nothing in the Act carves out the association-member relationship. Courts decide that one transaction at a time, against the association's own documents and the Condominium Act. New-home defects have their own regime under the New Home Warranty Act.

Fair Foreclosure ActN.J.S.A. 2A:50-53 et seq.

Governs the procedure for residential mortgage foreclosure in New Jersey — the lender's notice of intention to foreclose, the homeowner's right to cure the default, and related protections. It matters to owners facing foreclosure, and to associations because a unit's assessment lien interacts with the mortgage when a unit is foreclosed. New Jersey gives the association's lien a limited priority over the first mortgage for recent assessments (see Condominium Act § 46:8B-21).

Municipal Land Use Law (MLUL)N.J.S.A. 40:55D-1 et seq.

New Jersey's comprehensive zoning, planning, and subdivision statute. It governs how a development is approved — site-plan and subdivision review by a municipal planning or zoning board — before a community is ever built. Your community's layout, common areas, and private roads exist because of MLUL approvals, and the law is also where an owner turns for variances or zoning questions near the community. New developments separately answer to the Planned Real Estate Development Full Disclosure Act (PREDFDA).

Hotel and Multiple Dwelling LawN.J.S.A. 55:13A-1 et seq.

Sets health and safety standards for a “multiple dwelling”, enforced by the Department of Community Affairs' Bureau of Housing Inspection through periodic cyclical inspections. The definition at § 55:13A-3(k) is any building of one or more stories in which three or more units of dwelling space are occupied by people living independently of each other, or any group of ten or more two-unit buildings on one parcel or on contiguous parcels under common ownership.

Read the exclusion before assuming it applies to you. The same subsection carves out a building section of not more than four dwelling units that has at least two exterior walls unattached to any adjoining section, whose units are separated by walls of the required fire-resistant rating, and which is held under a condominium or cooperative form of ownership or by a mutual housing corporation — but the carve-out lapses for any unit in that section not occupied by its own owner, and for the section's common areas with it. Where the Act does reach a building it imposes maintenance and safety obligations on the building itself — a layer that sits alongside the association's own duties under the Condominium Act and Cooperative Recording Act.

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Commonly assumed — but they don't apply here

The myths worth clearing up.

These laws come up constantly in association disputes. In New Jersey, they don't govern private community associations — but the rights people are reaching for usually exist under a different law.

Does not apply
Open Public Meetings Act — the Sunshine LawN.J.S.A. 10:4-6 et seq.

The Sunshine Law requires public bodies to meet in the open. The test is in § 10:4-8(a): a group “collectively empowered as a voting body to perform a public governmental function” affecting anyone's legal rights, or “collectively authorized to spend public funds”. A community association does neither, so the Act does not reach it. Note that this turns on public function, not corporate form — an association need not be a nonprofit corporation at all, and often isn't (§ 45:22A-43(a) permits “a for-profit or nonprofit corporation, unincorporated association, or any other form permitted by law”; § 46:8D-3(a) says the same of a cooperative's association).

Owners do have open-meeting rights, and they are older than most people think. The Planned Real Estate Development Full Disclosure Act (PREDFDA) has required an association's bylaws to open executive board meetings to members, with adequate notice, since 1993 — § 45:22A-46(a) is L.1993, c.30, s.4, not a Radburn creation. Conference or working sessions at which no binding vote is taken are outside the rule, and the board may close the portions of a meeting dealing with individual privacy, pending or anticipated litigation or contract negotiations, attorney-client matters, or the employment, promotion, discipline or dismissal of a specific officer or employee.

What the statute does not give you is the microphone. At an open meeting, member participation “or the provision of a public comment session shall be at the discretion of the executive board” (§ 45:22A-46(a)). What you are owed is attendance, minutes, and copies of those minutes before the next open meeting. The 2017 “Radburn” amendments (P.L.2017, c.106) added something else: board elections (§ 45:22A-45.2) and a way to amend the bylaws when the bylaws themselves leave no route (§ 45:22A-46(d)(2)). Your own bylaws may grant a comment right the statute does not.

Does not apply
Open Public Records Act (OPRA)N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq.

OPRA lets the public request records from government agencies. It does not apply to private associations, so you can't file an OPRA request against your HOA. The right you're looking for comes from elsewhere, and it is worth knowing which door to use. If your association is a non-profit corporation, the Nonprofit Corporation Act lets a member of six months' standing (or one holding 5% of the memberships) examine the minutes of members' meetings and the record of members, for a proper purpose, on five days' written demand — the books of account are not on that list and reach a member only by court order (§ 15A:5-24(c), (d)). Every member may demand the balance sheet and income-and-expense statement in writing, with no waiting period (§ 15A:5-24(b)). If you own a condominium unit, use the Condominium Act instead: § 46:8B-14(g) makes the association's accounting records — all receipts and expenditures, and an account for each unit — “open to inspection at reasonable times by unit owners”, with no membership period, no 5% threshold and no proper-purpose test.

Not adopted in NJ
Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA)Model act — not enacted

Many states have adopted UCIOA, a single omnibus statute covering all common-interest communities. New Jersey has not. Instead, New Jersey governs communities through the separate acts indexed in the New Jersey HOA Law Guide — the Condominium Act, PREDFDA, the Nonprofit Corporation Act, and the rest. If you see UCIOA sections cited online, they're from another state and don't control here.

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General information, not legal advice. The laws summarized here are broad statutes HOPB does not reproduce in full; for the official current text, see the New Jersey Legislature. Always confirm the current law and how it applies to your situation.

New Jersey HOA law guide ← New Jersey HOA laws & resources