Elizabeth Short-Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Elizabeth, New Jersey and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, though only if you live in the property yourself. Elizabeth, in Union County, licenses short-term rentals under Chapter 5.90 of its city code, and owner-occupancy there isn't a side condition you can work around. It sits inside the definition. Ordinance No. 5621, which rewrote the entire chapter in March 2022, defines a short-term rental as the accessory use of a dwelling unit "which dwelling unit is owner-occupied."

Unfortunately, that rules out the plan most investors turn up with. Buy a two-family here, furnish it, list it nightly, live somewhere else, and there's no license to apply for, because what you've described isn't a short-term rental under the ordinance. It's an unlawful one. Live in the unit, or in the principal residence on the same lot, and the city will license you for $200 a year.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: who counts as an owner-occupant, what the license costs in 2026, the documents the city wants attached to the application, the three charges that land on every stay, how the enforcement machinery is built, and who to call when something stalls. Every figure below comes from Elizabeth's own ordinances or New Jersey's own tax publications, read in July 2026. Assuming you're weighing this city against a market where an investment unit can legally go nightly, run both through BNBCalc before you commit to either.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Elizabeth, New Jersey?

Before you model anything, make sure you know which document you're modeling against, because a lot of what's published about this city describes a version of the law that expired years ago.

Chapter 5.90 of the Code of the City of Elizabeth is the whole of the local rule here. It arrived as Ordinance No. 5424, adopted by the City Council on February 9, 2021. Fourteen months later the Council rewrote it. Ordinance No. 5621, passed March 22, 2022 and approved by Mayor J. Christian Bollwage the next day, amended sections 5.90.010 through 5.90.060, which is every section the chapter has. So when a summary quotes you a $75 fee, you're reading the 2021 text.

Start with what counts as a short-term rental. Under the amended 5.90.010 it's the accessory use of a dwelling unit, occupied by someone other than the owner or permanent resident, for a period of not more than 180 consecutive nights, in a dwelling unit that's owner-occupied and that's advertised or held out to the public as a place regularly rented to transient occupants. Hotels, motels, bed and breakfast inns, rooming houses and month-to-month tenants under N.J.S.A. 46:8-9.4 are all carved out of it.

Notice that number. It's 180 nights, not 30.

"Owner-occupied" carries its own definition, and it's a little more generous than it first sounds. You have to reside in the short-term rental property itself, or in the principal residential unit the property is associated with on the same lot. Own a house with a legal second unit behind it, live in the house, and that second unit can be the rental. Where the owner is an entity rather than a person, at least one principal or member of the entity has to live there.

Principal residence then gets a three-part test, and the ordinance requires all three: it's where at least one of the owners spends the majority of their non-working time, it's most clearly the center of their domestic life, and it's the address on their driver's license, voter registration or state ID card.

That brings us to the sentence the 2022 amendment changed most. Section 5.90.020(A) makes it unlawful for any owner to rent, operate, or advertise a short-term rental anywhere in Elizabeth without first obtaining a license issued by the Chief License Inspector. The old version of that sentence read "for a period of thirty (30) days or less," and Ordinance 5621 struck those words out. Since the definition now reaches 180 consecutive nights, a two-month furnished stay you advertise publicly falls inside the licensing regime, where in 2021 it wouldn't have.

Some units can't be licensed at any price. Section 5.90.020(B) bars short-term rentals in a dwelling unit where rent is set by a federal or state agency, set by an agreement with the owner or developer, or governed by rent control under Chapter 5.70.

Do check that last one early, because it reaches further into the city's older multifamily stock than most owners expect. The rent control master document effective December 12, 2024 exempts only motels, hotels, rooming houses, "housing units of two (2) units or less, housing units of three (3) are owner-occupied and housing units of four (4) which are owner-occupied," along with new housing built after the chapter took effect.

Anything else is rent controlled, and rent controlled means no short-term rental. That chapter itself runs until December 31, 2026 unless the governing body extends it again, which it has done more than once.

Four conduct standards apply to every licensed rental, and they're written into 5.90.020(C) rather than left to a guest-behavior policy:

• No commercial events, and no social events with non-guests. A licensed unit is for lodging, not for hosting parties that spill past the people staying there.
• Nobody under 21 rents the property. The primary occupant signing the agreement has to be over 21 and has to actually occupy the place during the stay. Guests under 21 can share it with them. Where no adult over 21 is in occupancy, the owner and the primary occupant are both liable.
• No signage at all. No sign identifying the short-term rental use, and no identification of it on any mailbox.
• Parking gets a hard ratio. Renters are limited to one vehicle per two occupants, and you certify on the application that you'll make every effort to avoid or mitigate on-street parking pressure in the neighborhood.

Ordinary tenancies stay untouched by all of this. Section 5.90.020(D) says plainly that nothing in the chapter prevents formation of an otherwise lawful occupancy of a dwelling unit for a rental period of more than thirty days.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Elizabeth

That last clause is the escape hatch, and it's worth holding onto, because for a good number of readers it's the only door still open.

Unfortunately, for anyone who doesn't intend to live in the property, there's no business here to start. No license unlocks it, no LLC gets you round the owner-occupancy test (the entity's own principal has to reside there), and no fee buys the right. The city hasn't hidden this either. Ordinance 5424's title said the point out loud, that the chapter exists to regulate short-term rentals and "to prohibit short-term rentals that are not owner-occupied."

What's left is a real business, just a smaller and more particular one. You live in Elizabeth, you license the unit you live in or the second unit on your own lot, and you host guests around your own life. A two-family where you occupy one side is the classic shape. So is an owner-occupied three or four unit building, which the rent control chapter exempts precisely because the owner lives in it.

A few situations need extra attention before you spend anything:

• Condominiums need the association on side. A condo application has to arrive with a letter of approval from the condominium association attached, so start that conversation before you start the paperwork.
• Rooming houses sit outside this chapter entirely. Section 5.90.030(H) exempts them from the license requirement, since they're governed by Chapter 5.76 and the New Jersey Rooming and Boarding House Act at N.J.S.A. 55:13B-1 et seq.
• Buying an already-licensed property gets you nothing. The license expires automatically when the property changes ownership, and the new owner files a fresh initial application and pays the first-time fee again.
• Rent-controlled buildings are a dead end, and that covers most stock of three units or more that the owner doesn't live in, unless it went up after the rent control chapter took effect.

Assuming none of that fits, then the honest pivot is still the market above thirty nights. A furnished mid-term let sits outside Chapter 5.90 by way of 5.90.020(D), it sits outside the state's transient accommodation tax once it runs 90 consecutive days or longer, and it falls under ordinary landlord and tenant law instead.

Our Union County guide covers how neighboring towns treat the same question, and the New Jersey statewide guide maps how differently one municipality can behave from the next here.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Elizabeth

Assuming you do clear the owner-occupancy test and are able to move ahead, the license itself is the next hurdle, and it's a single annual charge rather than the stack of small fees the older summaries describe.

The Bureau of Central Licensing issues it. Section 5.90.030(C), as amended in 2022, sets an annual application and registration fee of $200.00, and it breaks that figure down for you: $75.00 for the application and registration itself, $75.00 for the carbon monoxide inspection, and $50.00 for the zoning inspection required to obtain a Rental Certificate of Occupancy.

Then it adds the sentence you want to read twice. The fee is "non-refundable, even if the application is denied."

Two inspections sit behind that money. The Bureau of Planning and Zoning issues the Rental Certificate of Occupancy, which certifies the unit comports with the city's Housing Code and zoning ordinances and is eligible to be used as a short-term rental. The Fire Prevention Bureau issues a separate certificate confirming the unit passed a carbon monoxide inspection.

Fail either one and you get 60 days to remove, correct or abate whatever the Zoning Officer or Fire Official specified. Miss that window and you're resubmitting the application with another annual fee, so don't let a small correction drift.

Once granted, the license runs for one year from the date of issuance and renews annually on the anniversary of the original issuance. The Chief License Inspector gives you 60 days' notice before it lapses, and if you don't intend to renew you're required to say so in writing within 30 days. A license can't be transferred or assigned, can't be used by anyone other than the owner it was issued to, and can't be applied to a different property.

Three obligations then run for as long as the license does, and each of them is worth building into your operating routine on day one:

1. Your license number goes in every advertisement. Print, digital, internet, the MLS, any real estate listing. Advertising without a valid license number is itself a violation of 5.90.030(B), separate from renting without one.
2. Every change of occupant gets reported. Section 5.90.040(E) requires the owner to give the City the identity of all transient occupants each and every time occupancy changes during the active license year, on a city form or electronically, including names, ages, and the start and end dates of each rental period.
3. $500,000 of general liability insurance stays in force. Proof of it goes in with the application, and it's a minimum rather than a recommendation.

Timing is reasonable, at least. The Bureau either issues the license or issues a written denial stating its reasons within 10 business days of a complete application. A denial gives you 10 business days to appeal in writing to the Chief License Inspector, and the Business Administrator or their designee then hears and decides the appeal within 30 days.

Keep in mind that a license only issues after all outstanding violations on the property have been abated, and that the Chief License Inspector checks whether all city taxes, real and personal, have been fully paid before signing anything off.

Required Documents for Elizabeth Short-Term Rentals

Since that $200 doesn't come back, it's worth assembling the file properly the first time. Section 5.90.040 lists what the application has to contain, and the list is longer than the fee would suggest.

The application form itself calls for:

• Owner contact details in full. Name, address, telephone number and email of the owner of record. Where the owner isn't a natural person, you name every partner, officer and director of the entity and give personal contact information, including address and telephone number, for each of them.
• The address of the unit to be used as the short-term rental.
• A copy of your driver's license, voter registration or state identification card, confirming that the property is your principal residence as the chapter defines it.
• A sworn acknowledgement that the property constitutes your principal residence, or that you're entitled to an exemption from that requirement.
• A 7-day-a-week, 24-hour contact. The owner's name, address, telephone and email serve as it.
• A second sworn acknowledgement, certified under oath, that you've received the section, reviewed it, understand it, and that everything in the application is accurate.
• A parking inventory. The number and location of all parking spaces available to the premises, counting legal off-street spaces and on-street spaces directly adjacent, plus your certification that you'll work to avoid a parking shortage for the neighbors.
• An agreement on the vehicle ratio, limiting renters to one vehicle per two occupants.
• An agreement to use best efforts so that transient occupants don't disrupt the neighborhood or interfere with neighbors' quiet enjoyment of their own properties.

Four things get attached alongside it: proof of your current ownership of the unit, proof of general liability insurance of at least $500,000, written certifications from the short-term rental agent and the responsible party agreeing to perform their duties, and, for a condominium, that letter of approval from the condo association.

That "responsible party" role deserves a moment, because it's where a lot of remote-managed listings would come unstuck. The ordinance defines the responsible party as the owner or a designated property manager who can be called upon and is responsible at all times during the rental for the property's maintenance and for the conduct of its occupants, and who, in the manager's case, accepts service of legal process on the owner's behalf. Someone real has to answer the phone at 2am.

Elizabeth Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to settle, and Elizabeth is one of a handful of New Jersey cities that taxes lodging on its own authority instead of using the standard municipal option.

The state's own Technical Bulletin TB-81R2 sets out how the layers fit together, and it does the arithmetic for this city by name.

A rental obtained through a marketplace or qualifying as a professionally managed unit, "occurring in Elizabeth is subject to a total of 13.625% in taxes and fees."

Charge	Rate	Collected by
New Jersey Sales Tax	6.625%	NJ Division of Taxation
Elizabeth hotel occupancy tax	6%	City of Elizabeth Tax Collector
State Occupancy Fee (reduced)	1%	NJ Division of Taxation
Combined	13.625%	Platform, on marketplace bookings

That 1% is the line worth understanding. The State Occupancy Fee runs at 5% across most of New Jersey, but because Elizabeth amended its own ordinance to impose a hotel occupancy tax on transient accommodations, the state fee dropped here to 1% effective October 2, 2018.

Elizabeth is also one of the cities excluded from the up-to-3% Municipal Occupancy Tax that other towns can adopt under N.J.S.A. 40:48F-1 through -7, as the Division of Local Government Services confirms in Local Finance Notice 2026-09. Two taxes don't stack on top of each other here. One replaced the other.

Who actually remits depends on how the booking arrives. When a stay comes through a transient space marketplace, which is what Airbnb and Vrbo are under the statute, the platform collects and remits the Sales Tax, the State Occupancy Fee and applicable local occupancy taxes for you. Airbnb's New Jersey tax page says it collects "All locally imposed Occupancy Taxes" on New Jersey reservations of 89 nights and shorter, typically 2% to 6% of the listing price including cleaning fees.

One thing there deserves flagging. That page names Atlantic City and Newark as the reduced-fee cities and doesn't mention Elizabeth at all, while the state's bulletin does. I've treated TB-81R2 as the authority on the rates, so check your own payout breakdown line by line rather than assuming the 6% city piece is handled.

Direct bookings work differently. The state taxes a transient accommodation only where it's obtained through a marketplace or where it's a "professionally managed unit," which TB-81R2 defines as a unit sharing no living or sleeping space with another rental unit and controlled by someone offering two or more other units for rent in New Jersey that year.

So a single owner-occupied Elizabeth rental booked directly, by an owner with no other New Jersey units, falls outside the state layer. Cross into professionally managed territory and you must file Form NJ-REG with the Division of Revenue at least 15 business days before you start, unless every booking runs through a marketplace.

The city piece is filed by hand, quarterly. The HOTR-100 return instructions tell you to report all receipts for the quarter with no deductions allowed, multiply by 6%, and mail the return to the Tax Collector's Office at 50 Winfield Scott Plaza.

Returns are due November 1, February 1, May 1 and August 1, for the quarters ending September 30, December 31, March 31 and June 30. Don't forget the attachment either: Ordinance No. 3899 requires the Form ST-50 sales and use tax filings you used to calculate and support the revenue you're reporting.

Be aware that late payment carries real interest under N.J.S.A. 54:4-67. It's 8% on the first $1,500 of delinquency, 18% per annum on anything above that, and a further 6% penalty on any delinquency over $10,000 left unpaid at fiscal year end.

One gap I'd rather name than paper over. Elizabeth's hotel tax chapter is only published through Municode, which blocks automated reading, so I couldn't confirm from the chapter text whether the city's own 6% reaches a direct booking that the state layer misses. Going through the city's forms alone won't answer it either. That's a question for the Tax Collector's office, and it's worth a phone call before your first direct reservation rather than after.

New Jersey Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those city taxes exist because the state let Elizabeth write its own, and that's the pattern across almost everything else here too.

New Jersey has no statewide short-term rental license, no state registry, and no preemption stopping a town from regulating as it likes. The Division of Local Government Services puts it plainly in Local Finance Notice 2026-09, issued April 7, 2026 ahead of the FIFA World Cup and the America250 events: renting short-term transient accommodations "is largely subject to municipal ordinance."

The one statute pointing at licensing is enabling rather than restrictive. N.J.S.A. 40:52-1(n) authorizes a municipality to license "the rental of real property for a term less than 175 consecutive days for residential purposes by a person having a permanent place of residence elsewhere," and leaves the fee to each town's own ordinance.

Tax is the genuinely statewide layer. P.L. 2018, c.49 first applied Sales Tax, the State Occupancy Fee and the Meadowlands Regional Hotel Use Assessment to transient accommodations from October 2018, then P.L. 2019, c.235 narrowed it in August 2019 to rentals booked through a marketplace or qualifying as professionally managed units. The Meadowlands assessment won't touch you in Elizabeth, since it applies only to listed towns in Bergen and Hudson counties.

Stays of at least 90 consecutive days are exempt from the state taxes altogether, as are rentals executed entirely by a licensed New Jersey real estate broker meeting TB-81R2's criteria, rentals to ST-5 exempt organizations, and rentals to federal or state government.

What none of that gives you is consistency between towns. Elizabeth's owner-occupancy rule is a municipal choice, and the town next door made a different one. Jersey City runs a much more restrictive regime, Newark taxes lodging under the same city-level authority Elizabeth uses, and the shore counties are a different market entirely. Assuming you're weighing markets rather than a specific address, our Ocean County guide and Monmouth County guide cover the vacation-rental side of the state, where whole-unit nightly rentals are ordinary rather than exceptional.

Does Elizabeth Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Elizabeth isn't one of those places, though, so it's worth knowing how the city polices what it wrote. Section 5.90.060(A) puts enforcement in the hands of the Chief License Inspector, the Fire Official, and law enforcement as their jurisdiction may arise.

The fines themselves are conventional. Section 5.90.060(D) sets a penalty of not less than $250 and not more than $2,000 on conviction in Elizabeth Municipal Court or another court of competent jurisdiction. Each day's failure to comply with any provision, rule or order counts as "a separate and distinct offense."

That daily multiplier is the part that hurts. A listing left up through a summer isn't one $2,000 exposure.

Losing the license costs more than the fine does. Any violation of the chapter carries revocation "for a time not less than one (1) year," and you can't apply for a new license during that period. Revocation also follows fraud, misrepresentation or a false statement in the application process, the same in the course of renting, operating or advertising, and failure to remediate a danger that makes the property unsafe, unsanitary or unfit for human habitation.

That last ground is the only one where the Chief License Inspector can revoke permanently. You get two business days from the notice to request a hearing in writing, the hearing happens within ten days of the request, and the Business Administrator affirms or reinstates. Don't ask for one and the revocation becomes automatic ten days after notice.

Three design choices matter more than any of that, though, because they decide how easily a violation gets spotted in the first place.

The advertising rule does most of the work. Your license number has to appear in every print, digital and internet advertisement and in any MLS listing, which means a listing without one is visibly non-compliant to anyone reading the page, before a single guest arrives.

The occupant-reporting rule does the rest. Telling the city the name, age and stay dates of every transient occupant, every time occupancy changes, hands it a record no other Elizabeth landlord has to produce. And the application circulates for investigation and report to the Directors of Police, Fire, and Health and Human Services, plus the heads of the Bureau of Construction and the Bureau of Planning and Zoning, so five departments see your address before a license issues.

What I can't give you is a number. Unlike New York City, Elizabeth publishes no dataset of active short-term rental licenses and no enforcement statistics that I could find on the city's own pages as of July 2026, so nobody outside City Hall can say how many summonses actually issue in a year.

Watch out for anyone online who quotes you a figure for it. Treat the absence as an unknown rather than as evidence of a relaxed attitude, especially when the tools above make a violation this cheap to identify.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Elizabeth

Since the cheapest violation to spot is the one you never commit, the order of the steps below still matters more than it looks. Much of it turns on facts about you rather than facts about the property, so the early steps tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting at all.

1. Confirm the property is your principal residence, on the ordinance's terms. Majority of non-working time, center of domestic life, and the address on your license, voter registration or state ID. All three, not two.
2. Check the building against rent control. Two units or fewer, an owner-occupied three or four unit building, or new construction after Chapter 5.70 took effect, and you're clear. Anything else, and 5.90.020(B) blocks the license.
3. Get the condo association letter, if you're in a condominium, before anything else. Nothing else in the file moves without it.
4. Bind $500,000 of general liability cover and get the certificate in hand.
5. Book both inspections early. The zoning inspection for the Rental Certificate of Occupancy through the Bureau of Planning and Zoning, and the carbon monoxide inspection through the Fire Prevention Bureau. Remember that a failure starts a 60-day clock, after which you're paying the $200 again.
6. Clear outstanding violations and city taxes. The Chief License Inspector checks both, and neither is negotiable at the counter.
7. File the application with the Bureau of Central Licensing and pay the $200. Expect a decision within 10 business days, and remember you have 10 business days to appeal a denial in writing.
8. Put the license number into every listing the moment it's issued, on every platform and in any MLS entry.
9. Set up the occupant log before your first guest, so reporting names, ages and stay dates each time occupancy changes is routine rather than a scramble.
10. Diarize the anniversary. The license runs one year from issuance, you'll get 60 days' notice, and a lapse means operating unlicensed rather than operating late.

Who to Contact in Elizabeth about Short-Term Rental Regulations

Since almost every step above belongs to a different bureau, knowing which one owns your question is worth an hour of anyone's time. They're all at City Hall, 50 Winfield Scott Plaza, Elizabeth, NJ 07201, and the main line is 908-820-4000.

Licensing, applications and renewals run through the Bureau of Central Licensing, Room 101.

• Phone: 908-820-4182
• Fax: 908-820-4183
• Chief License Inspector: Jennifer Boehm, listed as Acting Chief License Inspector as of July 2026

The Rental Certificate of Occupancy and zoning questions go to the Department of Planning and Community Development, Room 114, on 908-820-4160, where Maria Z. Carvalho is Director. The Zoning Officer, Thomas Nicastro, is reachable through the Zoning Board of Adjustment office in Room 101 on 908-820-4027.

The carbon monoxide inspection certificate comes from the Fire Prevention Bureau on 908-820-2837, under Fire Official Dennis Guiro.

Hotel occupancy tax filing belongs to the Tax Collector, Division of Revenue, Room 102, on 908-820-4114, where Paul Lesniak is Tax Collector and City Treasurer. Returns and payments go to City of Elizabeth Hotel Tax, Tax Collector's Office, 50 Winfield Scott Plaza, Elizabeth, NJ 07201.

Sales Tax, the State Occupancy Fee and Form NJ-REG are state matters rather than city ones, handled by the New Jersey Division of Taxation. Its Hotels and Motels Occupancy Fee page carries the current forms and filing routes.

One honest caveat on all of that. Elizabeth doesn't publish office hours for any of these bureaus on its own pages, and I'd rather tell you that than repeat a schedule I couldn't verify. Call ahead before you drive to City Hall with a file of documents.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Elizabeth on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those phone numbers matter more here than in most cities, because the secondhand information circulating about Elizabeth is unusually bad.

Let me be straight about what I could and couldn't read. I found no Elizabeth-specific discussion I was able to open and verify. The BiggerPockets thread on New Jersey cities near New York that older guides quoted now returns a 404, the forum index shows no thread titles to an automated reader, and Reddit blocks this kind of access outright, so I haven't quoted it.

What follows is my read of the claims that keep resurfacing in host communities and aggregator write-ups, checked against the ordinance rather than against each other.

• "The permit is $75." That was true in 2021 and stopped being true in March 2022. Ordinance 5621 struck the $75 line and the separate $55 Rental Certificate of Occupancy fee, replacing both with the single $200 annual fee. Any guide still quoting $130 for year one is quoting a repealed schedule, including, until this refresh, ours.
• "Short-term rentals are allowed in commercial zones and conditionally in residential ones, with caps near schools." This appears on at least one regulation-summary site and has no basis in Chapter 5.90. The chapter's geographic test is owner-occupancy plus the rent control exclusion. There's no zone map and no special use permit.
• "Elizabeth bans short-term rentals in buildings over four units unless the owner is present." That's Jersey City's rule being attributed to the wrong city. Elizabeth's four-unit line comes from the rent control chapter's exemption list, which does different work.
• "Enforcement is light, so people operate without a license." Maybe, and I can't disprove it without data the city doesn't publish. Notice what you'd be betting on, though. The advertising requirement makes an unlicensed listing self-identifying, and the penalty accrues per day rather than per incident.

For the revenue side of this, sitting next to the rules, the New Jersey market data is worth a look before you decide the paperwork is worth it.

And the pattern behind all four of those claims isn't unique to Elizabeth. Wherever a town rewrote its rules once and quietly, the summaries freeze at the old version and get copied forward for years, so the cheapest hour in any acquisition is still the one you spend reading the amending ordinance yourself, all the way through.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run an Airbnb in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 2026?

Only in a home you live in. Elizabeth's Chapter 5.90, as rewritten by Ordinance 5621 in March 2022, defines a short-term rental as an owner-occupied dwelling unit rented for not more than 180 consecutive nights, so a property bought purely as an investment has no legal path. The owner must reside in the rental unit itself or in the principal residence on the same lot, and must hold a license from the Bureau of Central Licensing before renting or advertising.

How much does an Elizabeth short-term rental license cost?

The annual application and registration fee is $200.00, and it's non-refundable even if the application is denied. That single figure covers the $75 application and registration charge, a $75 carbon monoxide inspection, and the $50 zoning inspection behind the Rental Certificate of Occupancy. The license runs one year from the date of issuance and renews annually on that anniversary. Owners must also carry at least $500,000 in general liability insurance.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Elizabeth?

A taxable stay carries 13.625% in total: 6.625% New Jersey Sales Tax, 6% Elizabeth hotel occupancy tax, and a 1% State Occupancy Fee, which is reduced from the usual 5% because Elizabeth taxes lodging under its own ordinance. Airbnb and Vrbo collect and remit these on bookings made through their platforms. The city's own 6% is reported quarterly on Form HOTR-100 to the Tax Collector, with no deductions permitted.

What are the penalties for an unlicensed short-term rental in Elizabeth?

Conviction carries a fine of not less than $250 and not more than $2,000, and each day of non-compliance counts as a separate offense. Advertising without a valid license number is a violation in its own right, separate from renting. A licensed owner who breaches the chapter faces revocation for a minimum of one year, with no new application accepted in that time, and permanent revocation where the property is left unsafe or unfit for habitation.

Can you rent an entire unit in Elizabeth for more than 30 days?

Yes. Section 5.90.020(D) states that nothing in the chapter prevents an otherwise lawful occupancy for a rental period of more than thirty days, so a conventional tenancy stays outside the short-term rental regime. Watch the definitions, though, since an owner-occupied unit advertised publicly to transient occupants can be a short-term rental up to 180 nights. Stays of at least 90 consecutive days are also exempt from New Jersey's transient accommodation taxes.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.