New Jersey Recording Fee Surcharge Helps Homeless

Recording Fee Surcharge now in effect in several counties with more to follow.

New Jersey's County Homelessness Trust Fund Act, P.L. 2009, c. 123, became law in September 2009. The Act permits counties to establish a Homelessness Trust Fund for the purpose of moving the homeless and formerly homeless into permanent affordable housing. In order to fund this initiative, those counties that establish such a fund may add a $3 surcharge to recording fees.

Presently, the following four counties have elected to establish a Homelessness Trust Fund and are charging the $3 surcharge:

Hudson, Bergen , Middlesex and Passaic.

Union County has established the Trust Fund but has not yet started to impose the surcharge.

The statute is slightly confusing as it says the recording of assignments and substitutions of Deeds of Trust as being exempt from the fee. (This phrase was lifted from a similar statute in Washington State.) We think the law’s intention is to exempt assignments of mortgages, and the Hudson, Middlesex, Passaic and Union County Clerks agree.

However, Bergen County does not give any credence to the intention of the statute and requires payment of the surcharge on an assignment of mortgage.

So, before you send those documents to the clerk for recording, call ahead to be certain as to the status of the surcharge in that county.

We will do our best to keep you up to date as more counties create the Trust Fund and begin imposing the surcharge.

For your next title order
or if you have questions about what you see here,
contact Stephen M. Flatow
Vested Title Inc.
648 Newark Avenue, P.O. Box 6453, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel 201-656-9220 - Fax 201-656-4506
E-mail vti@vested.com - www.vested.com

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