Bergen's challenge isn't one big old city. It's fragmentation. Each certificate goes to the municipality where the unit sits, so a landlord with buildings in several towns is filing with several municipalities.
The rentals cluster in the south and along the Hudson. Hackensack alone has 12,808 renter households, and 63% of the city rents. Fairview (67%), Palisades Park (65%), East Rutherford (65%), Wallington (62%), Lodi (58%) and Garfield (55%) are all majority renter. In Wyckoff, Oakland and Emerson, fewer than one household in ten rents.
Across the county, 74% of housing predates 1980. Some pockets are older than people expect: Ridgefield Park is 93% pre-1980, and half of Bogota's homes went up before 1940.
Bergen's two dust wipe towns on the 2025-26 NJ DCA list aren't the ones most people would guess. They're Alpine and Montvale, two northern boroughs with few rentals. Hackensack, Garfield and every other rental hub in the county are visual inspection towns.
| Town | Method | Renter households | Share renting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hackensack | Visual | 12,808 | 63% |
| Fort Lee | Visual | 8,156 | 45% |
| Garfield | Visual | 6,185 | 55% |
| Lodi | Visual | 5,582 | 58% |
| Cliffside Park | Visual | 5,161 | 49% |
| Montvale | Dust wipe | 624 | 20% |
| Alpine | Dust wipe | 38 | 7% |
The state assigns the method from children's blood lead test results in each town, not from how old or how rented the housing is. That's why the list rarely matches intuition. Check the current list for every address.
Sources: NJ DCA 2025-26 Lead-Based Paint Inspection Methodology list; N.J.A.C. 5:28A (inspection cycle, tenant turnover and exemptions); U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates.
Not every Bergen rental needs certification. The law covers units built before 1978. In Edgewater, only 30% of housing predates 1980, so a large share of its rentals are too new to be covered. In Fort Lee it is 65%, so about a third of its housing was built in 1980 or later.
On a mixed portfolio, sort units by year built before you do anything else. Anything from 1978 or later comes off the list, and you only need inspections for what's left.
$125 to $150 per unit, lab included, in every one of the 70 towns. A Garfield two-family is $250 to $300. A 20-unit Hackensack building is $2,500 to $3,000 before bulk pricing, which starts at five units.
For how NJ inspection pricing is put together, see what a lead paint inspection costs in NJ.
Next door: Passaic County and Hudson County. Certificate types explained: Lead Safe vs. Lead Free.
Send the addresses. Note the build year if you know it.