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

Do you own a place in Paterson and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Paterson has never passed a short-term rental ordinance. There's no city permit to chase, no registration portal, no annual license fee, and no cap on how many nights a year you can book. On paper it looks about as light-touch as a host could ask for.

The catch turns up one document later, and it's a real one. Paterson's zoning ordinance says at §500-2.2(C) that its use schedule "shall be viewed as permissive," and that any use not listed as a principal, conditional or accessory use for your district "shall be deemed to be prohibited within such district" (Chapter 483 Land Development Ordinance, April 2016). Short-term rental appears nowhere in that schedule. The three lodging uses Paterson does recognize, hotels, inns and bed and breakfasts, are all blank in every residential zone, and bed and breakfasts are permitted in exactly one district in the whole city.

So the honest position in Paterson, which sits in Passaic County, New Jersey, is a grey area rather than a green light. Let's walk through what that actually means for you: how the zoning schedule reads, which licenses and inspections attach to renting a dwelling here at all, the 11.625% of tax a booking carries, how the city enforces when a neighbor complains, and exactly who to call to get an answer in writing. Every figure below comes from Paterson's own code or from New Jersey state sources, checked in July 2026, and where a claim couldn't be pinned to an official page I've said so instead of guessing. Before any of it matters, though, run the property through BNBCalc and see whether the nightly numbers even beat a straightforward twelve-month lease.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Paterson

That zoning schedule is where your business plan lives or dies, so it's worth reading it the way the Zoning Bureau does. Paterson keeps two of them: a Residential Use Schedule covering R-1, R-2, R-3, R-4 and R/C-3, and a Non-Residential Use Schedule covering the business, industrial and historic districts. Each use gets a mark in each district column, or nothing at all.

Hotels, inns and bed and breakfasts have nothing at all in any of the five residential columns.

On the non-residential side they finally appear, though not generously. Hotels are a permitted principal use in B-3, B-4 and GFH. Inns and bed and breakfasts are permitted in GFH only, which is the Great Falls Historic District, the old mill quarter around the falls. One district, out of the fifteen those two schedules cover.

The definitions matter as much as the districts, mind you, because they decide which box your property could ever fall into. Paterson's ordinance defines a bed and breakfast as "an owner-occupied single-family residence providing short-term lodging and meals for travelers," and adds that any such home "shall be licensed by the City of Paterson." An inn is a commercial establishment with not more than 10 guest rooms and no more than 25 paying guests. A hotel needs 10 or more guest rooms and sleeping facilities for 25 or more people.

Notice what isn't there. There's no category for a furnished condo let by the night, no category for a spare room in a two-family, and no category for the entire-home listing most investors are picturing.

That silence is the whole problem, since §500-2.2(C) turns silence into prohibition. A zoning officer who reads your listing as transient lodging has a clean basis to say it isn't a listed use in an R district. A zoning officer who reads it as ordinary residential occupancy of a dwelling, with unusually short tenancies, has a basis to shrug. Paterson has published no determination either way, and I couldn't find one on any city page, so this is a call the Zoning Bureau makes property by property.

Which is why the first thing to buy here isn't furniture. It's an answer in writing.

The Application for Zoning Permit asks you to "describe in detail the activity or activities to be conducted in the principal building," and the Zoning Officer then specifies which sections of the ordinance are involved and whether a variance is needed. Make sure you describe the nightly-rental plan honestly on that form. A determination you can hold beats an assumption you can't, and if the answer comes back negative you'll have found out for the price of an application rather than the price of a build-out.

Get it wrong and the exposure isn't theoretical. Paterson's illegal conversions ordinance bars anyone from renting a unit that's "in excess of the number of such units for a particular building or zone." That covers units without a certificate of occupancy too. The fine runs $100 to $1,000, or up to 90 days, and each day of continued rental counts as a separate violation.

Where no specific penalty is written into a chapter, §1-19 of the code sets the ceiling at $2,000 per violation, again with each day standing on its own. So a listing that stays up while the city is objecting gets more expensive every single day it does.

One more thing to weigh before you buy a multi-family here, because it catches out-of-town investors constantly. Paterson has rent control.

Chapter 381 applies to every dwelling offered for rent in the city with three or more units when it's owner-occupied, or two or more units when it isn't. It caps annual increases at 5%, or 3.5% for head-of-household tenants aged 65 and over or found disabled by the Social Security Administration.

Hotels and motels are exempt, and so is a building in which only one dwelling unit is rented. A three-family where you plan to run one unit nightly and lease the other two, though, is squarely inside the ordinance. Neighboring markets run different rules entirely, so the Passaic County guide is worth reading alongside this one if you're still choosing a town.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Paterson

Assuming the zoning answer comes back workable and you're able to move ahead, there's still a stack of paperwork, and none of it is short-term-rental paperwork. Paterson simply applies its ordinary rental machinery to you.

Start with the mercantile license, which is the closest thing to a business permit the city issues. Chapter 322 makes it unlawful to "engage in any business, trade or occupation within the City" without one.

The application fee is $50, the license itself is $125 per year or any part thereof, renewal is $100 due 30 days before expiry, and a transfer to a new owner or a new premises is another $100. The term runs on the calendar year and expires every 31 December, so a license bought in November costs the same $125 as one bought in January.

The Division of Consumer Affairs issues it once the City Council approves the application, and delinquent property taxes on the premises will block both issuance and renewal. Violations carry $100 to $1,250 plus up to 90 days, per day.

One wrinkle there is worth raising with the licensing office rather than deciding yourself. Section 322-7D says no mercantile license is required where the operator "is required to be licensed under any other chapter," and the zoning ordinance separately says a bed and breakfast "shall be licensed by the City of Paterson." Ask which license the city expects from you before you pay for the wrong one.

Then comes the piece that reshapes short-term operations more than anything else in Paterson's code.

Chapter 175 requires a certificate of re-rental approval from the Division of Community Improvements "immediately prior to allowing a new tenant to take possession of a housing space." The inspection has to happen while the unit is vacant, and no more than 30 days before the new occupant moves in. Fees are $50 for the first housing space and $20 for each additional one, with reinspections at $25 and $15.

The timing rules are better than you'd expect, at least. The Division must inspect within three business days of your request, and if it hasn't reached you by 4:00 p.m. on the third day you're deemed to hold a temporary certificate. An expedited inspection inside one business day is available too, on a sworn application, where a delay would cost you rent.

Owner-occupied two-family homes are excluded from the definition of housing space, so they sit outside this one. Everything else is in, at a penalty of up to $1,000 and 90 days, per day.

Read that against a booking calendar and you can see the tension. The ordinance was written for tenancies, not for guests who arrive Friday and leave Sunday, and Paterson has published nothing explaining how (or whether) it applies the re-rental rule to nightly stays. I couldn't find a single official page addressing it. Do ask the Division directly, in writing, because the difference between "once per tenant" and "once per booking" is the difference between a business and a hobby.

The fire certificate has the same shape and a clearer fee schedule. Under §215-11, a certificate of smoke detector and carbon monoxide compliance is required before any one- or two-family dwelling "is sold, leased or otherwise made subject to a change of occupancy," it's valid for six months, and it isn't transferable. What it costs depends entirely on how much notice you give:

• Less than 4 days' lead time: $300
• 4 to 10 days: $200
• More than 10 days, for a re-rental: $75
• More than 10 days, for a property sale: $125

Keep that spread in mind when you schedule, because the same inspection swings by $225 on timing alone. Buildings of three or more units skip the CSDCMC (the state inspects those instead) and pick up an annual Bureau of Fire Prevention registration instead, running from $198 at three units to $440 at 25, and above that a $165 common-area fee plus $11 per unit.

Two smaller registrations round it out. If you don't live at the property, Chapter 371 requires you to register your own street address with the City Clerk, at a fine of up to $500 for a first offence and no less than $1,000 after that. And New Jersey's landlord identity registration, which we'll come back to below, is filed with the same clerk.

Required Documents for Paterson Short-Term Rentals

Since none of those approvals arrive on their own, it's worth assembling the file once rather than chasing documents four separate times. Here's what Paterson and the state between them will want to see for a typical one- or two-family Paterson rental:

• A zoning determination for the specific address, from the Application for Zoning Permit, describing the nightly-rental use in plain terms. This is the document everything else rests on.
• Proof of a fire inspection and a lead inspection, which the Division of Community Improvements states the owner must submit before a re-rental inspection can even be performed.
• A current CSDCMC, dated within the last six months and matching this occupancy, not the previous one.
• A lead-safe certificate for any dwelling built before 1978, valid for two years from issue.
• The landlord identity registration statement, on the form at N.J.A.C. 5:29-1.1, filed with the Municipal Clerk and handed to the occupant. Buildings of three or more units register with the state instead.
• Your mercantile license application, with the Standard Industrial Classification code for the activity and a property-tax account that's current.
• Rent Leveling registration, if the building falls inside Chapter 381, listing each unit's address, rent, services and the date of the last increase.
• Proof of insurance that names the actual use. Paterson doesn't set a minimum, and I found no city insurance requirement anywhere in the code, but a standard homeowner's policy generally won't respond to a paying guest, so don't forget to tell your carrier what the property is doing.

Paterson Short-Term Rental Taxes

Paperwork aside, the tax picture in Paterson is the cleanest part of this whole guide, and it's the one place the city is unambiguously cheap. There's no city lodging tax at all.

Chapter 445, the taxation chapter of Paterson's code, runs to four articles covering tax abatements, the Economic Opportunity Act, the cannabis transfer tax and escrow deposits on payment-in-lieu-of-tax applications. Not one of them imposes a hotel or occupancy tax. As of July 2026 Paterson is likewise absent from the Division of Taxation's list of municipalities that have adopted the hotel/motel occupancy tax, where the only Passaic County entries are Clifton, Totowa, Wanaque and Wayne, all at 3%.

So a taxable Paterson stay carries two charges and stops:

Charge	Rate	Collected by
New Jersey Sales Tax	6.625%	NJ Division of Taxation
State Occupancy Fee	5%	NJ Division of Taxation
Paterson municipal or hotel occupancy tax	none adopted	not applicable
Passaic County lodging tax	none	not applicable
Total on a taxable stay	11.625%	your platform, or you

Both rates come from the Division of Taxation's Technical Bulletin TB-81R2, and Tax Topic Bulletin S&U-13 confirms the same 5% figure. The reduced State Occupancy Fee that applies in Atlantic City, Elizabeth, Newark and Jersey City (1%) and in the three Wildwoods (3.15%) exists because those cities levy hotel taxes of their own.

Paterson isn't on that list either, so you pay the full 5% and nothing local. There's also no Meadowlands Regional Hotel Use Assessment here, since the 14 municipalities it covers all sit in Bergen and Hudson counties.

One caveat on the label. April 2026 guidance from the Division of Local Government Services, Local Finance Notice 2026-09, groups Paterson with Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Atlantic City and the Wildwoods as cities "authorized to apply separate hotel or tourism-related statutory taxes" rather than the 3% municipal occupancy tax, while TB-81R2 leaves Paterson out of that same list. The two official sources disagree on the category. They agree on the outcome, which is what you're actually paying: Paterson has enacted nothing, so nothing local is due.

Now the part that decides whether you owe the 11.625% in the first place. New Jersey only taxes a transient accommodation booked through a transient space marketplace (Airbnb, Vrbo and the like) or one that counts as a professionally managed unit, meaning the owner or controller offers two or more other units for rent in New Jersey during the same calendar year.

TB-81R2 is explicit that a direct booking, taken outside any marketplace, by an owner with fewer than three New Jersey units, isn't taxed at all. Stays of 90 consecutive days or more are exempt regardless. So are rentals executed entirely by a licensed New Jersey real estate broker who hands over keys at the brokerage and provides no hotel-style services.

If you're listing on a platform, the collection happens without you. Airbnb's own New Jersey tax page confirms it collects and remits the 6.625% Sales Tax and the 5% State Occupancy Fee on reservations of 89 nights or shorter. Remember that this is collection, not absolution: rent a professionally managed unit directly rather than through a marketplace and you have to register with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services on Form NJ-REG at least 15 business days before the first booking, then collect and remit yourself.

New Jersey Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those state taxes are, oddly enough, most of what New Jersey does to short-term rentals. The rest it leaves to the towns, which is exactly why Paterson's silence carries so much weight.

Local Finance Notice 2026-09, issued 7 April 2026, puts it in one sentence: "Rental of short-term transient accommodations is largely subject to municipal ordinance." The one statewide statute pointed at short-term rentals is enabling rather than restrictive. N.J.S.A. 40:52-1(n) authorizes, but does not require, 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," with the fee set by each town's own fee ordinance. Paterson has never used that authority, which is precisely why there's no license to apply for.

There's no statewide short-term rental registry either, and no state permit. What New Jersey does impose on anyone renting a dwelling reaches you whether or not the stay is short:

Landlord identity registration. Under N.J.S.A. 46:8-28, the owner of a single-unit dwelling or a non-owner-occupied two-unit dwelling files a registration statement with the municipal clerk and gives a copy to the occupant, naming the owner, the managing agent, an emergency contact reachable at any hour, and any recorded mortgage holders. The form was last revised in April 2026. Buildings of three or more units register instead with the DCA's Bureau of Housing Inspection, which runs the Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Law, inspects on a five-year cycle and requires annual recertification of your registration data.

Lead-based paint inspection. Under P.L. 2021 c.182 and N.J.A.C. 5:28A, pre-1978 single-family, two-family and multiple rental dwellings must be inspected for lead-based paint hazards every three years or on tenant turnover, whichever comes first. Lead-safe certificates last two years, and owner penalties run up to $1,000 per week until the inspection happens or remediation starts.

Watch out for the exemption there, because it looks tailor-made and probably isn't. The rule exempts "single-family and two-family seasonal rental dwellings which are rented for less than six-months duration each year by tenants that do not have consecutive lease renewals." Whether a year-round Airbnb qualifies as seasonal is not a question to answer for yourself.

Because so much sits at the municipal level, two towns 15 minutes apart can run opposite regimes. Our New Jersey statewide guide maps the overall picture, and the Bergen County guide covers the towns just across the county line, where the licensing and the local taxes shift from one municipality to the next.

Does Paterson Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Enforcement is the question every one of those chapters eventually turns on, and Paterson's answer is unusual: it can't strictly enforce short-term rental rules, because it doesn't have any. What it has instead is a housing and zoning enforcement apparatus that a complaint can point at you.

The mechanism is complaint-driven, as it is in most New Jersey cities. Nobody at City Hall is scraping listing sites. A neighbor calls about noise, parking or a stream of strangers with suitcases, an inspector visits, and from that point the city is choosing among tools it already owns.

That's where the numbers stop being abstract. An unlisted use in a residential district points at the illegal conversions chapter, at $100 to $1,000 per day. Renting without the re-rental certificate points at Chapter 175, at up to $1,000 per day. Operating without a mercantile license points at Chapter 322, at $100 to $1,250 per day. Anything with no penalty of its own lands on §1-19's $2,000 ceiling.

None of these is a one-time ticket, and that's the part owners underestimate, because every one of them counts each day of continued operation as a fresh offence. Worse, they stack rather than compete.

Paterson publishes no short-term rental enforcement data, no inspection statistics and no public register of violations, so I can't tell you how often any of this is used against a listing. Anyone who tells you they know the number is guessing. What I can tell you is that the city's Community Improvements division dispatches housing inspectors daily on ordinary code enforcement, and that its inspectors are only in the office between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. because the rest of the day they're out on inspections.

Be aware, too, that the enforcement risk here isn't only municipal. Rent control adds a second front: an illegal increase under Chapter 381 runs $100 to $1,500, and a landlord who hasn't met the registration requirements loses the right to the annual increase entirely. Miss the lead inspection and the state's $1,000 per week accrues without anyone from Paterson getting involved at all.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Paterson

Given how much of that is discretionary, the order you do things in matters more here than in a city with a checklist. Work through it front to back, since the early steps tell you whether the later ones are worth paying for.

1. Pull your zoning district before anything else. The Division of Planning & Zoning publishes the zoning map and both use schedules. Assuming you land in the Great Falls Historic District, a bed and breakfast or an inn is a listed use and your path is comparatively clear. Anywhere in R-1 through R-4, it isn't.
2. File an Application for Zoning Permit describing the actual use. Send it to the Zoning Bureau at 125 Ellison Street and get the determination in writing. If a variance is required, the Zoning Board of Adjustment is the next stop, not a workaround.
3. Check the building itself. Every unit needs a certificate of occupancy, and a unit created without the right permits, or in excess of what the zone allows, is an "impermissible unit" you're barred from renting at all.
4. Book the fire inspection early. More than 10 days' notice gets you a $75 re-rental CSDCMC; under four days costs $300 for the identical visit. Buildings of three or more units register annually with the Bureau of Fire Prevention instead.
5. Get the lead inspection done if the building predates 1978, and hold the lead-safe certificate before you advertise.
6. Request the certificate of re-rental approval from Community Improvements while the unit is vacant, with the fire and lead paperwork in hand, and ask them in writing how the certificate applies to short stays.
7. Apply for the mercantile license, budgeting $50 up front, $125 for the calendar year and $100 each renewal, and confirm with Mercantile Licensing that no other chapter's license displaces it.
8. File the landlord identity registration with the Municipal Clerk, plus the nonresident owner registration under Chapter 371 if you live elsewhere, plus Rent Leveling registration if the building has two or more rented units.
9. Sort tax before the first guest. A platform will handle the 6.625% and the 5% for you on stays of 89 nights or shorter. Direct bookings across three or more New Jersey units mean NJ-REG at least 15 business days ahead and remitting yourself.
10. Diarize the renewals. The mercantile license expires every 31 December, the CSDCMC lasts six months, the lead-safe certificate two years, and the fire registration renews annually. Remember that a lapsed license is its own violation, not merely an admin oversight.

Who to Contact in Paterson about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Most of those ten steps run through four offices, and knowing which one owns your question will save you a morning. All of them sit within a few blocks of each other downtown.

Zoning, the use determination, and variances

The Division of Planning & Zoning is the office that decides whether your plan is a listed use, and its answer governs everything else.

• Address: City Hall Annex, 125 Ellison Street, 2nd Floor, Paterson, NJ 07505
• Phone: (973) 321-1343
• Zoning Official: Jesus R. Castro, [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Planning Board and Zoning Board of Adjustment: 125 Ellison Street, 4th Floor, (973) 321-1343 ext. 2349

Rental inspections, certificates and housing code

The Division of Community Improvements handles the certificate of re-rental approval, the housing maintenance code and the Zoning Bureau's enforcement arm.

• Address: 111 Broadway, Paterson, NJ 07505
• Phone: (973) 321-1232
• Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., though UCC and housing inspectors are only at their desks from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Fire certificates and fire registration

The Paterson Fire Division, through its Bureau of Fire Prevention, issues the CSDCMC and takes the annual multiple-dwelling registration.

• Address: Fire Headquarters, 300 McBride Avenue, Paterson, NJ 07501
• Phone: (973) 321-1400
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Licensing, rent control and the clerk

• Mercantile Licensing: 125 Ellison Street, (973) 321-1242, Monday to Friday 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Rent Leveling Office: 125 Ellison Street, 1st Floor, (973) 321-1242, Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Municipal Clerk: 155 Market Street, Paterson, NJ 07505, (973) 321-1310, Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. This is where the landlord identity registration and the nonresident owner registration are filed, and where the current Zoning and Land Development Ordinance is kept on file.

For anything above the city, the New Jersey Division of Taxation administers Sales Tax and the State Occupancy Fee, and the DCA Bureau of Housing Inspection handles buildings of three or more units at PO Box 810, Trenton, NJ 08625-0810, (609) 633-6229, [email protected].

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

Those offices deal in ordinances. The host conversation deals in impressions, and the gap between the two is wider in Paterson than in most markets I've looked at. What follows is my read of the recurring themes rather than any kind of survey, so do weigh it accordingly.

The dominant view online is that Paterson is easy, and you can see why it took hold. Investor write-ups and city-comparison posts routinely file Paterson under "not regulated," usually alongside a warning about the tighter regimes in the cities nearby. On the narrow point, they're right. There's no ordinance, no permit and no local tax, and I found nothing suggesting the city runs any short-term-rental-specific enforcement program.

Where that consensus goes wrong is in treating an absence of rules as an assurance. Paterson's use schedule is permissive-only, so a use nobody wrote down is a use that's prohibited by default, and nothing about that reads as friendly once an inspector is standing in your hallway. The commentary I've seen almost never mentions §500-2.2(C), and it almost never mentions that a certificate of re-rental approval is owed on every change of tenancy.

One claim in particular deserves flagging, because it has spread widely. Several guides, including our own earlier version of this page, reported that Paterson officials had signalled a tiered short-term rental licensing system for 2026, with occupancy limits, inspections and insurance standards. I could not confirm that from any official source. No such chapter exists in the code, eCode360's new laws page for Paterson reports no adopted legislation awaiting codification, and nothing on the city's own site describes such a proposal. Treat it as unverified until an ordinance number turns up, and don't build a plan around a rule nobody can produce.

My own read, and I'd hold it loosely, is that Paterson's position is stable mainly because nobody has forced the question. A city that runs rent control on two-unit buildings and inspects at every change of tenancy is not philosophically relaxed about rental housing. It just hasn't turned its attention here yet. Should you want to see how Paterson's nightly economics compare with the rest of the state before you commit to any of this, the New Jersey market data is the faster way to sanity-check the assumption that this is where the return is.

The wider lesson generalizes past Paterson, and it's the one worth carrying into any market. A town with no short-term rental ordinance hasn't given you permission. It's simply left the question to whoever answers the phone at the zoning counter, and the cheapest thing you'll ever buy is their answer in writing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Airbnb legal in Paterson, New Jersey in 2026?

There's no straightforward yes. Paterson has never adopted a short-term rental ordinance, so no city license or registration exists. Its zoning ordinance, however, states that any use not listed for a district is prohibited there, and hotels, inns and bed and breakfasts are all absent from every residential zone. Bed and breakfasts and inns are permitted only in the Great Falls Historic District. Anyone planning a nightly rental in a Paterson residential neighborhood should get a written zoning determination from the city's Zoning Official before spending money.

How much tax do you pay on a short-term rental in Paterson?

A taxable stay carries 11.625%: 6.625% New Jersey Sales Tax plus the 5% State Occupancy Fee. Paterson levies no municipal occupancy tax and no hotel tax of its own, and Passaic County adds nothing, so there is no local layer. The tax applies only where the booking runs through a marketplace such as Airbnb or Vrbo, or where the unit is professionally managed, meaning its owner offers two or more other New Jersey units that year. Stays of 90 consecutive days or longer are exempt.

Does Paterson require a license or permit for a short-term rental?

Not a short-term rental license, because none exists. Other approvals still apply to renting a dwelling in Paterson: a mercantile license at $50 to apply plus $125 a year, a certificate of re-rental approval at $50 for the first unit before each new occupant takes possession, and a certificate of smoke detector and carbon monoxide compliance costing $75 to $300 depending on notice given. Buildings of three or more units also register annually with the Bureau of Fire Prevention, starting at $198.

What are the penalties for an illegal short-term rental in Paterson?

Penalties come from the ordinance the city chooses to apply. Renting an impermissible unit draws $100 to $1,000 and up to 90 days. Renting without a certificate of re-rental approval draws up to $1,000 and up to 90 days. Operating without a mercantile license draws $100 to $1,250. Where no specific penalty is set, the code's general provision allows up to $2,000. Every one of these treats each day of continued operation as a separate offence, so the totals compound quickly.

Does rent control apply to a short-term rental in Paterson?

Paterson's rent leveling ordinance covers every dwelling offered for rent in the city with three or more units when owner-occupied, or two or more when not, and caps annual increases at 5%, or 3.5% for head-of-household tenants aged 65 and over or found disabled. Hotels, motels and buildings in which only one unit is rented are exempt, as are multiple dwellings built after 23 December 1999. An investor buying a two-family or three-family in Paterson should assume the long-term units fall inside it.

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