Almost four in five Union County homes predate 1980. For a rental owner that means one thing: assume your unit is covered by the lead-safe law until the build year says otherwise.
Elizabeth carries the rental load. 34,327 households rent there, about 40% of every renter in the county, and 73% of the city's housing is pre-1980. The inner ring is even older on paper. Hillside is at 91% pre-1980, Roselle Park at 89%, Cranford at 87%. Those aren't big rental towns, but nearly every unit they do have is old enough to be covered.
On the 2025-26 NJ DCA list, 20 of Union County's 21 municipalities are visual inspection towns. Plainfield is the exception. It meets the state's threshold for elevated blood lead in children under six, so every covered Plainfield rental needs dust wipe sampling with lab results.
| Town | Method | Renter households | Built before 1980 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elizabeth | Visual | 34,327 | 73% |
| Plainfield | Dust wipe | 8,782 | 85% |
| Linden | Visual | 6,267 | 76% |
| Union Township | Visual | 6,084 | 78% |
| Rahway | Visual | 5,943 | 65% |
| Roselle | Visual | 3,808 | 79% |
| Hillside | Visual | 2,301 | 91% |
Plainfield matters more than its size suggests. 55% of households rent, 85% of the housing is pre-1980, and 36% went up before 1940. Our price there is the same as anywhere else: $125 to $150 per unit with the lab included, so a five-unit Plainfield building is $625 to $750.
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.
The law has two clocks: every three years, and every tenant turnover, whichever comes first. With three out of four Elizabeth households renting, the turnover clock tends to matter most. Each time a unit's tenants move out and a new tenant moves in, that unit needs a valid certificate, and the owner has to give it to the new tenant and the municipality.
If you own several Elizabeth buildings, keep a simple list of each unit's last inspection date and its next expected move-out. That list is also what we need to put together one estimate for the whole portfolio.
Elizabeth, Plainfield, Linden, Union, Rahway, Roselle, Roselle Park, Hillside, Summit, Springfield, Cranford, Westfield, Scotch Plains, Fanwood, Clark, Kenilworth, Garwood, Mountainside, New Providence, Berkeley Heights, and Winfield.
The western towns rent less, from about one household in five in Westfield to one in three in Summit, but their housing is just as old. Westfield has more pre-1940 housing (37%) than Plainfield. A single-family rental there needs the same certificate as an Elizabeth six-family.
Neighboring counties: Essex and Middlesex. Before the inspection: the lead-safe certification checklist.
List your Union County buildings and unit counts and we'll quote them together.