The windows, all lengthened

The offer-for-sale contract window goes from 45 to 120 days. A re-offer at the same or a lower price goes from 10 to 30 days. Where more than three months have elapsed, 30 to 60 days. On a bona fide third-party offer, the landowner's report period goes from 30 to 120 days, and the landowner "shall not conclude any agreement to sell the land until after the… 120-day period."

The statute also fixes contract terms: "a reasonable financing contingency of at least 90 days," and at the landowner's option "a refundable earnest money requirement of up to $50,000."

Notice, expanded substantially

Certified mail return receipt to DCA, the municipal clerk and the mayor or chief executive, every nonprofit on a new DCA-maintained public list of affordable-housing nonprofits — which DCA must update within 90 days of a request — and every resident homeowner, the last also by first-class mail with tracking and by delivery to each manufactured home.

The notice must state residents' rights and deadlines and the price and terms or a copy of the offer. On a bundled sale it must state both the aggregate price and the price of that community. The residents' negotiating committee grows from three to up to seven representatives, plus counsel.

The enforcement is the sharpest part

New C.46:8C-14.1 lets any resident homeowner or the Attorney General sue in Superior Court. Relief includes "declaratory and injunctive relief, voiding of the sale of the land, actual damages, and punitive damages," and the court "shall award reasonable attorney fees if the resident homeowners prevail."

A violation "shall constitute an unlawful practice" under the Consumer Fraud Act, N.J.S.A. 56:8-2, with all its remedies and penalties.

And a new anti-evasion test at C.46:8C-13.1: an exempt transaction must "be in good faith," be "made for a legitimate business purpose or a legitimate familial purpose," and "not be made for the primary purpose of avoiding the opportunity-to-purchase provisions."

Why a condominium or HOA reader should care

Be precise about the limits first: this governs manufactured-home and leasehold communities, not condominiums or fee-simple homeowners associations. A "private residential leasehold community" means no fewer than ten home sites under common ownership, leased to home owners, where the landowner supplies municipal-type services — streets, street lighting, garbage removal, snow removal, surface-water drainage.

Two things nonetheless carry across.

The first is the PREDFDA exemption itself. Where residents buy their community and hold it in a cooperative or corporate form that would otherwise be a planned real estate development, the PREDFDA registration and disclosure framework — including its election and governance provisions — does not attach. New Jersey has created a class of resident-owned community that is outside the association statute by design.

The second is what the drafting says about legislative intent. The Legislature looked at a statute that required residents to form a "homeowners' association" with a two-thirds vote, concluded that requirement was an obstacle, and replaced it with an informal group and a simple majority. That is a judgment about the burden of association formalities, made by the same Legislature that has thirty-five association-governance bills sitting unheard.

The companion rent cap

Separately, P.L.2025, c.85 — A3361, third reprint, signed July 1, 2025 — caps manufactured-home lot rent increases at three and one half percent over any 12-month period, with sections 1 through 3 inoperative until March 1, 2026. "Rent" includes lot fees, licence fees, tax surcharges passed through "and any other special expenses." Some coverage reports the figure as 3 percent; the enacted number is 3.5.