New Jersey tightened EV make-ready parking math for condo and co-op buildings
New Jersey tightened EV make-ready parking math for condo and co-op buildings
2026-09-15 · New Jersey · Legislation
New Jersey has closed a rounding loophole in the electric-vehicle parking mandate that governs new condominium and cooperative construction.
P.L.2026, c.51 — A4375, first reprint — was signed July 22, 2026 and took effect immediately. It amends N.J.S.A. 40:55D-66.20, the make-ready section added by P.L.2021, c.171.1
The underlying mandate, and who it reaches
The section applies "as a condition of preliminary site plan approval, for each application involving a multiple dwelling with five or more units of dwelling space, which shall include a multiple dwelling that is a building held under a condominium or cooperative form of ownership, a mutual housing corporation, or a mixed use development."
Where it applies, 15 percent of the required off-street parking must be built as Make-Ready, with electric vehicle supply equipment installed in one-third at certificate of occupancy, one-third within three years and one-third within six years. At least 5 percent of the EVSE must be accessible for people with disabilities.
What changed in July
Two things, both arithmetic.
First, every calculation under the section "that include[s] any fraction of a whole number … shall be rounded up to the next full parking space." A development whose 15 percent worked out to 4.2 spaces now owes five.
Second, the two-for-one parking credit — under which a Make-Ready space counts as two for the purpose of satisfying minimum parking requirements — "shall result in a reduction of no more than 10 percent of the total required parking, subject to adjustment resulting from rounding."
The second change is the one developers will feel
The two-for-one credit was designed as an incentive: install EV infrastructure, and the town counts those spaces double against the parking minimum. In practice it also functioned as a parking-reduction tool, and on a large site the arithmetic could remove a meaningful share of required spaces.
Capping the reduction at 10 percent of total required parking keeps the incentive and removes the loophole. For an association taking over a newly built community, that means more parking spaces than the pre-July arithmetic would have produced — and more paving, striping and stormwater area on the reserve schedule.
What this does not do
It is important to be exact here, because the mandate is routinely misdescribed. Neither the 2021 law nor the 2026 amendment requires an existing association to install anything. The entire section operates through site plan approval, keyed to "the number of new, off-street parking spaces created as part of a site plan approval."
An established New Jersey condominium with a forty-year-old parking lot has no make-ready obligation under this statute. Its EV charging duties come from a different place: the PREDFDA provisions barring an association from prohibiting or unreasonably restricting an EVSE in an owner's designated parking space, and requiring common-element access for the necessary utility lines.
A second EV law arrived five weeks later, and it is not in force yet
P.L.2026, c.79 — A4531, second reprint — was signed August 27, 2026. It creates an "alternative compliance method" that measures compliance by total charging capacity in kilowatts rather than by number of spaces, available only where the EVSE provides "a rated charging output of not less than 50 kilowatts per charging port."
It also bars a municipal agency from denying, conditioning or delaying approval "solely on the basis of the type of [EVSE] installed, the charging speed or rated capacity … or the use of the alternative compliance method."
But the statute says the alternative method "shall not be implemented until the adoption of implementing rules," and no such rules have been adopted. Anyone describing the kilowatt option as currently available is describing a provision that is signed and dormant.
Why a construction statute reaches a board
Because the association inherits what the site plan produced. Fifteen percent of parking built as make-ready, one-third of it energised at certificate of occupancy and the rest phased in over six years, becomes an association obligation at transition — including the second and third tranches, which frequently come due after the developer has gone.
For a transitioning board, the open questions are exactly which tranches were installed before turnover, what the three-year and six-year dates are, and whether the developer's obligation or the association's now carries them. That is a question for the transition audit, and it is easier to answer before the developer's entity dissolves than after.
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