New Jersey bill would limit condo reserve rules to buildings three stories or taller
New Jersey bill would limit condo reserve rules to buildings three stories or taller
2026-09-15 · New Jersey · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
The most aggressive attempt to shrink New Jersey's 2023 reserve and inspection law would cut it down by building height. A318 in the Assembly and S146 in the Senate, both introduced January 13, 2026, would amend P.L.2023, c.214 in three ways.1
Three stories or more
The bills would limit the capital reserve study and funding requirements to a "residential condominium or cooperative building that is three stories or more in height."
That threshold does not exist in current law. The words "story" and "stories" appear nowhere in P.L.2023, c.214 or in its 2025 amendment, and the Department of Community Affairs has said so directly: "the height of your association building has no bearing on whether your association is a 'covered building.'" A height limit is circulating widely in secondary summaries of New Jersey law; it is a description of this bill, not of the statute.
Twenty years to catch up instead of ten
Where curing a reserve shortfall would require a common-expense increase of more than ten percent, the bills change the catch-up period from ten fiscal years to twenty. Where the increase would be under ten percent, the period goes from two fiscal years to four.
There is a drafting wrinkle worth noticing: P.L.2025, c.132 deleted those catch-up subsections outright in August 2025. A318 was drafted against the pre-amendment text.
Narrowing what a reserve study covers
The third change narrows reserve studies to "components of the primary load bearing system" rather than all capital assets the association is obligated to maintain. For most communities that would remove roofs, paving, pools, clubhouses and mechanical plant from the study — which is to say, most of what a reserve fund actually pays for.
Who is behind it, and why the geography matters
A318's prime sponsors are Assemblymen Paul Kanitra and Gregory P. McGuckin, with co-sponsors Rumpf, Myhre, Fantasia, Inganamort, Clifton, Dunn and Scharfenberger. S146's prime sponsors are Senators James W. Holzapfel and Carmen F. Amato Jr., with co-sponsors Space, Schepisi and Johnson.
Kanitra, McGuckin, Holzapfel and Amato all sit in District 10 or its neighbours — Monmouth and Ocean counties. That is the heart of New Jersey's age-restricted, garden-style, low-rise association stock: exactly the communities a three-story threshold would exempt, and exactly the communities where the loudest complaints about the 2023 law have come from.
It is a reintroduction, and it retains a partner it no longer needs
A318 and S146 are the reintroduction of A5016 and S3852, both introduced in November 2024 and both dead at the end of the 221st. Neither moved then. Neither has moved now: A318 sits in Assembly Housing, S146 in Senate Community and Urban Affairs, each with a single line of history.
How it differs from the other reserve relief bill — and this is the part nobody has written
A5306 and S4508, the Polistina–Guardian bills introduced in June 2026, address the same complaint with an entirely different mechanism: they leave the law's scope alone and let associations stretch a funding plan from 30 to 35 years.
These are not variations on a theme. A318 removes buildings from the statute. A5306 keeps every building in and lengthens the amortisation. An association in a two-storey Ocean County community would be exempt under one and merely slower under the other. A condominium board reading press coverage of "HOA fee relief in Trenton" has no way of knowing which of two incompatible bills is meant, and both are stalled.
What the reserve-study narrowing would actually do
Of the three changes, the load-bearing-system narrowing is the one with the least public discussion and arguably the largest effect. Reserve studies under current law must cover "the capital assets of a common interest community that the association is obligated to maintain," and DCA has read "common area capital assets" broadly — hallways, lobbies, elevators, stairwells, recreational facilities, exterior walls, parking lots, roofs, gardens and landscaping, including exclusive-use areas such as balconies and patios.
Narrowing that to the primary load-bearing system would align the reserve duty with the structural-inspection duty. It would also mean an association could be fully compliant with a funded plan for its concrete frame while having nothing set aside for the roof over it.
Status
Neither bill has a committee statement, a reprint, a hearing or a vote. Both were introduced on the first day of the session and have not been touched since.
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