Between the 21 vicinages of the New Jersey Superior Court, thousands of employees are on staff, performing a variety of functions. Despite streamlining and reductions in workforce, the operation of the Courts remains a very expensive process, and the filing fees, which have not been increased in more than 10…
Our clients frequently ask us about Tenant Screening. For Landlords who want to minimize their risk of renting to problematic tenants, a variety of methods can be used to predict whether the tenant may present a problem in the future. Most Landlords are already familiar with the variety of online…
In New Jersey, most residential tenants are protected by the Anti-Eviction Act, which provides protection to residential tenants against evictions without cause. The fundamental principal of the Anti-Eviction Act is that the expiration of a residential lease does not terminate the tenancy. Recognizing the unfairness of forcing resident landlords to…
The vast majority of eviction complaints are based upon non-payment of rent. However, New Jersey law, which is focused on affording tenants an opportunity to cure any default, sets forth that complaints based upon non-payment of rent will be dismissed in the event that the tenant pays the rent that…
One central principle of the American legal system is that each party generally pays his or her own legal fees. There are, however, exceptions to this rule. One exception exists in cases in which there is a “fee shifting” statute that requires a particular party to pay the other party’s…
A few weeks ago, one of our clients encountered a common problem. The problem was that her tenant had attempted to cancel the lease several months before its expiration, claiming that his reason for doing so was that there was mold in the dwelling, rendering it uninhabitable. The claim by…
Our office previously reported on the law concerning New Jersey Rent increases. For landlords in towns that have not instituted rent control, the only requirement is that the landlord must prove that the rent increase being sought is not unconscionable. There would, therefore, be no preset percentage of allowable increase.…
Last month, our office released Part One of our two-part blog on collection actions. We had examined the steps involved in filing the suit for collection and what to expect on the day of Court. Our article ended with the entry of a Judgment against the Defendant, along with the…
In this multi-part article, we will discuss various aspects of collection practice for Landlords who are owed rents from prior tenants. The vast majority of New Jersey eviction actions are filed for non-payment of rent. Evictions based upon other causes comprise less than 10% of all filings. Our office is…
Our office previously reported on New Jersey’s Safe Housing Act, a 2008 statute that allows victims of domestic violence to terminate their residential leases on 30 days notice to the landlord. Since the time we published that article, we received an overwhelming amount of comments, and the general consensus has…