What must a New Jersey landlord disclose to a tenant, and what must the lease say?

No statute requires a residential lease to be in writing beyond the statute of frauds, so an oral tenancy is lawful. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the lease.

No New Jersey statute requires a residential lease to be in writing, and no statute anywhere in the code requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of a signed lease. A lease for a term of more than three years must be in a signed writing, or proved by clear and convincing evidence, to be enforceable. Where the lease is written it must be in plain language, and three individual disclosures carry their own type-size or boldface rules. An electronic lease and signature are valid.

Statute of frauds: A transaction intended to create a lease of real estate for more than three years is not enforceable unless the premises, the term and the identity of the landlord and the tenant are established in a writing signed by or on behalf of the party against whom enforcement is sought, or are proved by clear and convincing evidence (section 25:1-12). Even above the three-year line, an oral lease can still be enforced on clear and convincing proof.

Format and plain-language rules: New Jersey has no general type-size rule for leases, but the Plain Language Act does reach them: a consumer contract must be written in a simple, clear, understandable and easily readable way (section 56:12-2), and a consumer contract includes a writing by which an individual leases real property for personal, family or household purposes (section 56:12-1). Section 56:12-9 caps the act at amounts over $50,000 for everything except real estate, so no rent figure takes a lease out of it. A landlord who fails is liable for actual damages where the violation left the tenant substantially confused about the contract's rights, obligations or remedies, plus punitive damages up to $50 and reasonable attorney fees and costs up to $2,500 (section 56:12-3); a violation does not make the lease void or voidable and is no defense to enforcement (section 56:12-11). The three type-size rules in New Jersey law are duty-specific: the flood rider and the lead-in-drinking-water rider must each be in at least 12-point type, and the window-guard notice must be in prominent boldface type.

Language: No statute requires the lease itself to be written or translated into a language other than English. Two state documents carry language mandates instead: the Department of Community Affairs must publish the Truth in Renting statement in both English and Spanish (section 46:8-45), and a creditor's demand for payment of a dishonored check must be printed in both English and Spanish (section 2A:32A-1).

Electronic leases and signatures: New Jersey's electronic-transactions act (chapter 12A:12) gives an electronic record the force of a writing and an electronic signature the force of a signature (section 12A:12-7), and the landlord-tenant statutes carry no carve-out for residential leases, so a lease and the disclosures on this page may be signed and delivered electronically. Two disclosures prescribe a signing formality an electronic signature would have to reproduce: the flood notice and, once it is in force, the lead-in-drinking-water rider must each be individually signed or otherwise acknowledged by the tenant.

Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose the owner's or managing agent's identity to the tenant, in a separate writing or by a registration filed with a public office.

New Jersey routes owner identity through a registration certificate that the tenant receives. Every landlord files a certificate of registration — with the municipal clerk for a one-unit rental or a non-owner-occupied two-unit property, and with the Bureau of Housing Inspection in the Department of Community Affairs for a multiple dwelling — on forms the Commissioner of Community Affairs prescribes (section 46:8-28). The certificate carries eight items: the record owner of the premises and of the rental business, with all general partners named where the owner is a partnership; the registered agent and corporate officers where the owner is a corporation; a person living in the county who may accept notices, issue receipts and take service of process where no record owner is in the county; the managing agent; the superintendent or custodian, with the unit or room number; the name, address and telephone number of an individual representative who can be reached at any time in an emergency, who can make emergency decisions and who must always have access to a current tenant list for emergency personnel; every holder of a recorded mortgage; and, where the landlord furnishes fuel-oil heat, the fuel-oil dealer and the grade of oil used. The certificate must state the date it was prepared (section 46:8-30). A telephone number is therefore required. The landlord gives each tenant a copy of the certificate at the creation of every new tenancy, and a copy of any amended certificate within seven days after it is filed with the municipal clerk or within seven days of receiving a validated certificate back from the Bureau; an amended certificate must itself be filed within 20 days of any change in the information (sections 46:8-29 and 46:8-28.2). The registration act itself prescribes no posting; identity nevertheless reaches tenants by posting as well, because the maintenance rules require a posted notice telling tenants to report deteriorated paint that must carry the landlord's name, address and telephone number, and require an individual copy to each tenant where there is no central posting place. A landlord who has not complied cannot get a judgment for possession: the court continues the case for up to 90 days and dismisses it if compliance has not followed (section 46:8-33), and a violation carries a penalty of up to $500 for each offense, which the Attorney General, the municipality or any other person may pursue (section 46:8-35). Any lease term by which a tenant waives a right under the act is against public policy and unenforceable (section 46:8-36). One further delivery sits in the same act: at the creation of a tenancy, and within 30 days of the municipal clerk telling the landlord about it, the landlord must advise each tenant that the clerk keeps a list of residents who have asked to be identified as needing special assistance in an emergency, and must hand over a copy of the notice explaining how to join the list (section 46:8-29.1).

Threshold: The Landlord Registration Act's definition of landlord excludes owner-occupied two-unit premises (section 46:8-27), but a separate section reaches every tenant-occupied single-family or two-family property, including an owner-occupied two-family property, unless it is certified free of lead-based paint, was built during or after 1978, is a seasonal rental let for under six months a year, or has been certified as having a lead-free interior (section 46:8-28.5).

Yes — New Jersey prescribes both a general tenant-rights document and mandatory lease text. The document is the Department of Community Affairs' Truth in Renting statement, which must be distributed, given to each new tenant at or before occupancy, and kept posted. The lease text counted here is the rent-control exemption provision, which every lease in an exempt new multiple dwelling must carry and which turns on a period the landlord has to work out. New Jersey's other prescribed lease texts are subject-specific and sit in their own rows rather than here: the window-guard availability notice and, once in force, the lead-in-drinking-water rider are in the hazard table; the renter's flood-insurance paragraph and the flood rider are in the flood row; the lead-safe certification exhibit is in the hazard table with the certification form itself. The department's booklet also lists items a landlord "should provide" that are not lease content at all, and two of its eight entries do not survive a reading of the provision it cites.

Required items:

Truth in Renting — A guide to the rights and responsibilities of residential tenants and landlords in New Jersey — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Division of Housing and Community Resources. The Department of Community Affairs prepares a statement of the primary clearly established legal rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords, in a form and size suitable for posting and distributing, prints it in English and Spanish, posts it on the department's website in an easily printable format and updates it annually (section 46:8-45). Every covered landlord must then do three things (section 46:8-46): distribute one copy to each existing tenant within 30 days after the department makes a new statement available; give a copy of the current statement to each new tenant at or before the time the tenant takes occupancy; and keep a copy of the current statement posted in one or more places so that it is prominent and accessible to all tenants. A tenant's waiver or refusal of the statement does not change any of the landlord's duties (section 46:8-49). A violation contrary to the legal rights of tenants carries a penalty of up to $100 for each offense, which the commissioner, the Attorney General or any other person may bring (section 46:8-47). Revision: No revision date is printed on the face of the statement. The English and Spanish files each carry a file date of August 4, 2025, recorded as the revision in place of a printed one; both were unchanged as of September 2026, so the 30-day redistribution clock has not restarted. Given within a stated period and at move-in, handed over or posted. Languages: English, Spanish. Threshold: Reaches a landlord who rents or offers to rent dwelling units for a term of at least one month, except units in premises containing not more than two units, units in owner-occupied premises of not more than three units, and hotels, motels and other guest houses serving transient or seasonal guests (section 46:8-44). Agency page. (§ 46:8-46; § 46:8-45 a.)

Rent-control exemption statement and lease provision — a figure the landlord must compute and state in the lease. The owner of a multiple dwelling that is exempt from a municipal rent control or rent leveling ordinance must, before entering into any lease, hand the prospective tenant a written statement that the building is exempt for such time as may remain in the exemption period, and every lease offered while the building is exempt must itself contain a provision notifying the tenant of the exemption (section 2A:42-84.3). The section states no penalty; the act's only enforcement limb is a filing owed to the municipal construction official — a claim of exemption at least 30 days before the certificate of occupancy and a notice at least 30 days before the exemption period ends (section 2A:42-84.4). Given before signing and at signing, inside the lease itself. The statute fixes the substance, not the words. Computation: The landlord works out how much of the exemption period is left and states it. The exemption runs for the amortization period of any initial mortgage loan on the building or 30 years from completion of construction, whichever is less, and for 30 years from completion where there was no initial mortgage financing (section 2A:42-84.2); the remaining period is that span measured from today. The statute prescribes the substance and not the words, and supplies no fallback figure where the period is uncertain. Threshold: Multiple dwellings of four or more dwelling units (section 2A:42-84.1) that hold a new-construction exemption from a municipal rent control or rent leveling ordinance. (§ 2A:42-84.3)

Lease contents the statutes or rules address, each in the circumstance it names:

• In a multiple dwelling, a notice in prominent boldface type telling tenants and prospective tenants that window guards are available and that a tenant must ask in writing for them to be installed (section 55:13A-7.14).

• In every covered residential lease, the flood notice to tenants set out word for word in section 46:8-50, telling the tenant that flood insurance may be available to renters through the federal flood insurance program, that a standard renter's policy does not typically cover flood damage, and that the tenant is encouraged to check the policy.

• The flood-risk disclosure itself where the landlord chooses to carry it in a written lease, which is allowed only as a separate rider, individually signed or otherwise acknowledged by the tenant and written in at least 12-point type (section 46:8-50).

• A copy of the valid lead-safe certification, affixed as an exhibit to the lease, for a pre-1978 rental dwelling outside the four exemptions (section 52:27D-437.16).

• In a rent-control-exempt multiple dwelling of four or more units, a provision notifying the tenant of the exemption (section 2A:42-84.3).

• Once the duty comes into force, the lead-in-drinking-water disclosure where the landlord carries it in the lease, which is allowed only as a separate rider, individually signed or otherwise acknowledged by tenant and landlord and written in at least 12-point type (section 58:12A-12.3c).

• Any late fee, which a landlord can recover as additional rent in a possession action only where the written lease expressly provides for it (the amounts and the grace-period rules are on the late-fee page).

No.

No New Jersey statute or rule requires a move-in condition statement, inventory, checklist or walk-through, and nothing conditions a deposit deduction on one. The deposit statute does its work at the other end of the tenancy: what the landlord may keep is policed when the deposit is returned, under section 46:8-21.1, and not through any document signed at move-in. The maintenance rules for hotels and multiple dwellings create inspection duties owed to the enforcing agency, not a condition report owed to the tenant.

Deposit notice at signing: Within 30 days of receiving a security deposit the landlord must notify the tenant in writing of the name and address of the institution holding it, the type of account, the current interest rate and the amount deposited, and must repeat that notice when the institution changes, at each annual interest payment and within 30 days after a transfer of ownership (section 46:8-19). Deposit amounts, interest and return deadlines are on the security-deposits and deposit-interest pages.

Three in-force state hazard disclosures: lead (at signing, when the event the section names occurs, and by posting); child-protection window guards (at signing, annually, and by posting); and drinking-water test reporting in multiple dwellings (when the information changes and by posting). Also on the books: lead in drinking water disclosure — enacted but not yet in force; no state duty exists for mold, bed bugs, radon, methamphetamine, or asbestos.

Every state duty and every stated absence, hazard by hazard:

Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) — in force — a state duty, at signing, when the event the section names occurs, and by posting, on an agency document (a statute and an administrative rule). New Jersey adds a state inspection regime and a lease attachment on top of the federal lead rules. Every covered rental dwelling is inspected for lead-based paint at tenant turnover or within two years of the 2021 act, whichever is earlier, and after that at the earlier of every three years or the next turnover. At tenant turnover the owner must give the new tenant evidence of a valid lead-safe certification and must affix a copy of the certification as an exhibit to the tenant's lease, and must keep a record of the certification naming the tenants where the inspection happened during a tenancy (section 52:27D-437.16). A certification is valid for three years — the 2024 amendment replaced two years with three and removed the older cyclical-inspection evidence limb, so the credit line now reads L.2021, c.182, s.1; amended 2024, c.74, s.1. The certification is made on a form the Department of Community Affairs prescribes. Two further duties sit in the maintenance rules: the owner must hand out a department-developed pamphlet before repair work that will disturb more than two square feet of lead-based paint, unless the tenant received it in the last 12 months, and must post a notice telling tenants to report deteriorated paint that carries the owner's name, address and telephone number, giving each tenant a copy where there is nowhere central to post. The owner must answer a reported problem within 30 days, or within one week where a pregnant woman or a child under six lives in the unit or, for a common area, in the building (rule 5:10-6.6). Threshold: Every pre-1978 single-family, two-family and multiple rental dwelling, except one certified lead-free, one built during or after 1978, a multiple dwelling registered with the department for at least ten years with no outstanding lead violations from its most recent cyclical inspection, and a single- or two-family seasonal rental let for under six months a year without consecutive renewals (section 52:27D-437.16). Document: Lead-Safe Certification (fillable) for N.J.A.C. 5:28A, issued by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Division of Codes and Standards. Revision: No revision date is printed on the face of the form. The form's file carries a file date of October 10, 2024, recorded as the revision in place of a printed one. Agency page. In force since July 22, 2022. If the duty is not met: The section carries the department's own fee and enforcement machinery and is backed by the inspection sanctions of the Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Law, but it gives the tenant no remedy of their own: no damages figure, no lease-voiding right and no private action are stated for a missing lease exhibit.

Mold — no state duty. New Jersey has no mold disclosure duty of any kind. The word mold appears in the statutes only in unrelated places — comparative fault, a die-casting lien act and tax provisions — and neither the maintenance rules for hotels and multiple dwellings nor the lead rules for rental dwellings contain a mold provision. The state's sales-side property condition disclosure statement binds sellers, not landlords. A Mold Safe Housing Act has been introduced in both chambers and is in committee.

Bed bugs — no state duty. New Jersey requires no bed-bug disclosure, history or notice. The rule usually cited for one, headed "Elimination of infestation", is a maintenance duty: the owner is responsible for eradicating insects, rats and other pests where an infestation reaches two or more units or a common area, buildings must be kept ratproof and free of infestation, and hotels and multiple dwellings must have preventive treatment at least once a year (rule 5:10-10.2). The rule carries no notice, no form, no history question and no trigger, and the words bed bug appear nowhere in that subchapter; the pest-control duty belongs to the habitability page. The only mention of bed bugs in the statutes is a service-disruption notice a transient lodging must give third-party booking services.

Radon — no state duty. No New Jersey statute or rule requires a landlord to disclose radon to a tenant. The state's radon provisions are testing and mitigator certification programs, school and child-care testing, a remediation certificate the environmental department issues to the owner of contaminated residential property, and the radon hazard subcode. The one disclosure limb runs only on a sale: where a building has been tested, the seller must give the buyer a copy of the results and evidence of any later mitigation at the time the contract of sale is entered into (section 26:2D-73). The same section runs the other way for a tenancy — radon test results are confidential unless the owner waives that confidentiality in writing.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. New Jersey has no methamphetamine-contaminated property regime at all: no clean-up standard, no certificate, no disclosure duty and no bar on renting an affected unit. Every mention of methamphetamine in the statutes is criminal or a controlled-substance schedule, apart from two sections of the Fair Chance in Housing Act that govern how criminal records may be used when screening applicants, which belong to the application and screening page.

Asbestos — no state duty. No New Jersey statute or rule requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The Asbestos Control and Licensing Act regulates asbestos work and licenses contractors, another section bans the sale of certain asbestos products, and a further provision is a limitation period for asbestos claims; the rest are tax credits and definitions. None of them reaches a lease.

Lead in drinking water disclosure (not yet in force) — enacted but not yet in force, before signing and on renewal, in a signed acknowledgment (a statute). A 2025 act creates New Jersey's newest lease disclosure, and it is not in force yet. Once it begins, a landlord must give every prospective or current tenant a Lead In Drinking Water Disclosure before entering into a lease or a renewal. It must contain five things: an acknowledgment that the property is served by a lead service line or a line of unknown composition, where the landlord has been told so by a public water system; the year the property was built, with a statement that housing built before 1986 may have a lead service line or interior lead plumbing; a copy of any formal notice the landlord received in the previous three years that a lead action level was exceeded in the service area, unless that notice is more than 12 months old and the exceedance has since been corrected; a copy of any citation under the act issued in the 12 months before signing or renewal; and a copy of, or instructions for reaching, the health department's notice on the health risks of lead in drinking water. For an oral tenancy the disclosure is a separate notice on the department's model form. For a written lease it may be a separate notice or may sit inside the lease, but only as a separate rider, individually signed or otherwise acknowledged by both tenant and landlord and written in at least 12-point type. Knowledge standard: Notification the landlord has received from a public water system, and any formal notice or citation the landlord has received. Threshold: Not required for a unit in a residential rental property built after 1986, for a unit served by a line the public water system has determined is not a lead service line, or for a seasonal rental unit (section 58:12A-12.3c). The duty does not fall on a real-estate licensee who is not the landlord. Document: Model Lead Disclosure Statement (Lead In Drinking Water Disclosure), issued by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs. Revision: No revision date is printed on the face of the model statement. The file carries a file date of July 23, 2026, recorded as the revision in place of a printed one. Agency page. Takes effect no earlier than October 21, 2026: The duty begins within 90 days of the publication of both the health department's lead-in-drinking-water notice and the Department of Community Affairs' model disclosure statement. Publication is commanded into the New Jersey Register, whose issue dates are not readable on any freely published state surface, so the date here is the earliest the duty can begin: the model statement's own posted file is dated July 23, 2026, and 90 days from that floor is October 21, 2026. If the duty is not met: The act's own citation regime: a citation issued to the landlord in the 12 months before signing or renewal is itself one of the items the disclosure must include.

Child-protection window guards — in force — a state duty, at signing, annually, and by posting, in the lease itself (a statute and an administrative rule). Every lease offered to a tenant in a multiple dwelling must contain a notice, set out conspicuously in prominent boldface type, telling tenants and prospective tenants that window guards are available and that a tenant has to ask in writing for them to be installed (section 55:13A-7.14). At lease signing the owner or manager must also tell the tenant of that right out loud, and the fact that the spoken notice was given and understood must be recorded in a written document separate from the lease and signed by both the tenant and the owner. Twice a year the owner must deliver a notice to each unit, in the form the commissioner prescribes, about the obligation to install guards; a conforming lease provision counts as one of the two, so only one further notice is needed in a year in which the tenant received a lease or renewal carrying it. The periodic notice must be hand-delivered or sent by ordinary or certified mail, and the owner must keep records of compliance. The rules add a model lease and notice provision at Appendix 27A of the window-guard subchapter, which an owner may depart from only with the Bureau's written approval, and they require the notice to state the first-floor carve-out expressly. There is a standing common-area posting duty, a semi-annual inspection log kept while the guard remains installed and for five years after, and an annual January or February orientation program in buildings over three stories. Installation is owed where a child aged 10 or under lives in the unit or is regularly present for a substantial period, and no more than $20 per window guard installed may be passed on to the tenant who asked for it, whatever a municipal ordinance says. Threshold: Multiple dwellings, and rental units in common-interest communities. In a cooperative formed before the 2006 amendment the notice is not required in proprietary leases. A signed acknowledgment is taken. If the duty is not met: Enforcement runs through the Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Law's penalty and inspection machinery. The section states no damages figure for the tenant.

Drinking-water test reporting in multiple dwellings — in force — a state duty, when the information changes and by posting, by posting (an administrative rule). The owner of a multiple dwelling who prepares a Consumer Confidence Report, or who receives one from the owner or operator of a public community water system, must post each report in every common area the tenants routinely use. An owner who supplies water but does not prepare such a report, and who has to test the drinking water for the environmental department, must post a chart of the test results in the same places. Where there is no common area the tenants routinely use, a copy of the report goes to each dwelling unit (rule 5:10-15.5). The rule sets no type-size rule and lists no required contents beyond the report or chart itself. Threshold: Multiple dwellings only. If the duty is not met: Enforcement of the maintenance rules for hotels and multiple dwellings; the rule states no tenant remedy.

Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose both the property's flood-zone status and its flood history to a prospective or current tenant, in a signed acknowledgment.

Every covered landlord must tell each tenant, before the lease is signed or renewed, whether the property is in the Special Flood Hazard Area known as the 100-year floodplain or the Moderate Risk Flood Hazard Area known as the 500-year floodplain, and whether the landlord actually knows that the rental premises or any part of the parking areas has flooded. The notice goes to each new tenant in writing before the lease is signed. It may sit inside a written lease, but for a residential lease only as a separate rider, individually signed or otherwise acknowledged by the tenant and written in at least 12-point type. The Department of Community Affairs, with the environmental department, publishes a model Flood Risk notice carrying three questions: the two zone questions, answered yes on an effective map, yes on a preliminary map, or no, with no option for unknown; and whether the premises or any part of the parking areas has ever had flood damage, water seepage or pooled water from a natural flood event, answered yes, no or unknown, with the number of times and a description of each event where the answer is yes. The notice carries tenant and landlord signature and date lines. Separately and unconditionally, every residential lease must contain the notice the statute sets out word for word: that flood insurance may be available to renters through the national flood insurance program to cover personal property and contents, that a standard renter's policy does not typically cover flood damage, and that the tenant is encouraged to check the policy. That paragraph is owed whether or not the property is anywhere near a flood zone. The zone limb was held back until the state put an address look-up tool on its website, and the tool is in place; the model notice itself points tenants to it. The lease limb applies to leases signed or renewed from the ninetieth day after the department published the model notice; the notice's own posted file is dated December 20, 2023, which puts that cutover in March 2024, so every lease signed since then is covered. One drafting slip is worth knowing: the refund provision refers to a termination "under subsection f. of this section" where the termination right is in subsection e., and the code prints the section exactly as it was enacted.

Threshold: Seasonal rentals of less than 120 days are exempt. The section's definition of landlord also leaves out dwelling units in premises containing not more than two units, units in owner-occupied premises of not more than three units, and hotels, motels and other guest houses serving transient or seasonal guests, and reaches only terms of at least one month (section 46:8-50 g.). Document: Flood Risk Notice, issued by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, with the Department of Environmental Protection. Revision: No revision date is printed on the face of the notice. The file carries a file date of December 20, 2023, recorded as the revision in place of a printed one, and was unchanged as of September 2026. Agency page. If the duty is not met: Where the landlord fails to disclose that the property is in a Special or Moderate Risk Flood Hazard Area and the tenant later finds out, the tenant may end the lease by written notice of termination, effective when the tenant gives up possession; the landlord must then refund all rent and other amounts paid in advance for any period after the termination takes effect, no later than the thirtieth day after it. Where the landlord fails to disclose and flooding follows that damages the tenant's personal property, affects the habitability of the premises or affects the tenant's access to them, the tenant may pursue all legal remedies to recover damages.

Yes — the statute forbids disclosing the facts the rule names.

Two statutes bar the flow of information rather than requiring it. Radon test results are confidential: no person may tell anyone other than the environmental or health departments the address or owner of a nonpublic building they tested or treated for radon, unless the owner waives that confidentiality in writing, and the exceptions are the owner's own testing, contracting for further testing or mitigation, and the sale limb (section 26:2D-73). Separately, information disclosed under the state's sex-offender registry law may not be used for the purpose of applying for, obtaining or denying housing or accommodations, or benefits and services from a business establishment unless the purpose is consistent with enhancing public safety; a person aggrieved by a pattern or practice of misuse may sue for an injunction (section 2C:7-16). That second rule bars the use of the information in a housing decision rather than its disclosure, and it binds anyone who receives registry information, landlords included.

No enumerated list — New Jersey has no enumerated roster of prohibited lease clauses. Instead it has one general command: no landlord may offer any tenant or prospective tenant, or enter into, a written lease that includes a provision violating clearly established legal rights of tenants or responsibilities of landlords as established by the law of this State at the time the lease is signed (section 46:8-48). What is prohibited is therefore defined by the rest of New Jersey law rather than by a list, and the state statement the department publishes is expressly informational and does not itself decide what counts. Two anti-waiver provisions sit beside it: a tenant's waiver of a right under the Landlord Registration Act is against public policy and unenforceable, and a tenant's waiver or refusal of the state statement does not change the landlord's duties. The Truth-in-Consumer Contract, Warranty and Notice Act, which carries a $100 minimum penalty and is often assumed to police lease clauses, excludes residential leases by its own terms (section 56:12-15), so section 46:8-48 and its $100 penalty are the whole of the law here. The Plain Language Act adds a damages remedy for an unclear lease but expressly does not make the lease void or voidable and is no defense to enforcement.

The tenant may petition a court to end the lease.

Sanction as the statute states it: A tenant may petition a court of competent jurisdiction to terminate a lease that contains such a provision — the remedy is termination of the lease at the tenant's choice, not automatic voiding of the clause and not an action to strike it. The same act adds a penalty of up to $100 for each offense, recoverable in a summary proceeding brought by the commissioner, the Attorney General or any other person (section 46:8-47). Nothing in the section limits any other right or remedy the tenant has under the lease. Neither the penalty nor the termination right reaches a provision where the proposal to include it came from the tenant rather than the landlord.

The general provisions:

• Any lease provision that violates clearly established legal rights of tenants or responsibilities of landlords as established by the law of this State at the time the lease is signed (section 46:8-48).

• Any written or oral provision by which a tenant waives a right under the Landlord Registration Act, which is against public policy and unenforceable (section 46:8-36).

• A waiver or refusal by the tenant of the right to receive the state's Truth in Renting statement, which does not alter any of the landlord's duties (section 46:8-49).

• A term that is not written in a simple, clear, understandable and easily readable way, in a lease that is a consumer contract (section 56:12-2) — actionable in damages but not a ground for treating the lease as void (section 56:12-11).

No statute addresses attorney-fee clauses in residential leases as such.

New Jersey has no attorney-fee reciprocity statute for residential leases and no statute that converts a one-way landlord fee clause into a mutual one. Its rule runs the other way: absent an express lease term, a landlord recovers neither attorney fees nor late fees as additional rent in a summary dispossess proceeding, so a landlord who wants fees must have put them in the lease. Where a fee clause does exist in a rent-controlled property and the landlord is entitled to fees or expenses because the tenant did not pay rent, the court must take all the circumstances of the case into account and may cut the award down to a reasonable fee, unless a local ordinance already limits it (section 46:8-49.3).

Yes — state law authorizes local governments to add rules of their own, as stated here.

New Jersey's landlord-tenant statutes contain no preemption clause at all, and the state's structure assumes local rules operate alongside the state's. The registration system is routed through municipalities: one- and two-unit registrations are filed with the municipal clerk or another official the clerk designates, the clerk indexes them and makes them available for public inspection, the Bureau sends the municipality a validated copy of every multiple-dwelling registration, and the municipality may itself bring the penalty proceeding and keep the penalty. The prohibition on lease provisions that violate clearly established legal rights is measured against the law of the State generally. Rent control is municipal by design — the new-construction exemption statute presupposes that municipalities have enacted or will enact rent control or rent leveling ordinances — and the attorney-fee limitation in rent-controlled property defers expressly to a local ordinance that limits fees further. There is one express displacement of local law in this topic, and it runs the landlord's way: the $20 cap on what may be charged for each window guard installed applies notwithstanding any municipal ordinance to the contrary. No New Jersey city carries an anchored lease-packet sentence on this page.