Selling Above $1 Million in North Bergen? New Jersey Moved the Tax Bill to Your Side of the Table

If you are getting ready to list a penthouse on Boulevard East or a townhouse-style unit near the water this fall, you may still be thinking about the old rule: the buyer covers New Jersey's extra 1 percent fee on anything over $1 million, the seller stays clear of it, and everyone moves on. That assumption stopped being true a year ago. Since July 10, 2025, the seller pays it. In some cases the seller pays a lot more than 1 percent.

For most of North Bergen, this change is background noise. The town's typical sale sits well under the $1 million line, so the new rule never enters the conversation. But North Bergen also has a real, identifiable slice of properties, mostly along the bluff and the waterfront, where sales do cross that threshold. For sellers in that slice, the math at the closing table changed in a way that has nothing to do with interest rates or inventory and everything to do with a single piece of legislation most people never heard pass.

What Actually Changed on July 10, 2025

New Jersey's so-called mansion tax started in 2004 as a flat 1 percent fee on residential and certain commercial sales above $1 million, paid by the buyer at closing. On June 30, 2025, Governor Phil Murphy signed Bill S4666/A5804 into law, rewriting both who pays and how much. The new rule took effect ten days later, and it does two things at once. First, it shifts the entire fee from buyer to seller. Second, it replaces the flat 1 percent with a graduated schedule that climbs as the sale price climbs.

Here is what the New Jersey Division of Taxation now lists as the Graduated Percent Fee:

One detail catches people off guard every time: the fee applies to the entire sale price once you cross a tier, not just the portion above it. A $2,020,000 sale does not pay 1 percent on the first $2 million and 2 percent on the last $20,000. It pays 2 percent on the full $2,020,000, which works out to $40,400 owed by the seller instead of a buyer-paid $20,200 under the old flat rate, as Morgan Lewis has laid out in its breakdown of the new rate structure. That single mechanic, taxing the whole number instead of the marginal slice, is what turns a small price negotiation into a real cost decision.

The transition window has also already closed. Contracts fully executed before July 10, 2025 were eligible for a refund of anything paid above 1 percent, but only if the deed was recorded on or before November 15, 2025. That date has passed. For any North Bergen sale closing today, the graduated seller-paid schedule is simply how the fee works, with no grandfathering available.

Why This Barely Touches North Bergen, and Then Suddenly Does

North Bergen's town-wide numbers make the new law look almost irrelevant. Depending on the dataset, the town's median sale price has run somewhere between roughly $471,000 in July 2026 and $550,000 in late 2025, with price per square foot in the high $380s to low $390s. None of that comes close to a $1 million threshold, let alone the $2 million and $2.5 million tiers where the fee starts to bite.

But North Bergen is not one market. The same data that produces that modest median also shows a price ceiling that reaches roughly $2.15 million, with recent sales topping out near $1.95 million. That top end is not evenly distributed across the township. It clusters along Boulevard East and the River Road waterfront, in buildings like the Parker Imperial, a 30-story tower at 79th Street and Boulevard East, the Watermark on the Hudson, a full-amenity Gold Coast building with more than 40,000 square feet of shared space, and Roc Harbour, a gated community of roughly 70 townhouse-style duplex and simplex homes at 8000 River Road that has stood since 1987. It also shows up in co-op stock like Woodcliff Gardens, directly across from James J. Braddock Park.

Sellers in that tier are a small fraction of North Bergen's annual transaction count. They are also, by definition, the sellers with the most dollars riding on how the closing statement is written.

A fee that ignores nine out of ten sales in a town can still rewrite the one negotiation that determines what a seller actually walks away with.

The Co-op Wrinkle Most Explainers Skip

Most coverage of the new law is written for single-family "mansion" sellers, which is a little misleading given how the statute is actually built. The Graduated Percent Fee applies to Class 4C cooperative units by name, alongside standard residential property and certain farm parcels with residential structures. North Bergen's bluff corridor has real co-op inventory sitting right next to its condo towers. A seller moving a co-op unit at Woodcliff Gardens above the $1 million line owes the same graduated fee as the owner of a condo two buildings away. That detail rarely makes it into generic statewide guides written around suburban single-family homes, but it is directly relevant to anyone selling a larger unit in one of the older bluff-top cooperative buildings.

Where the Threshold Actually Bites

The tier boundaries create a strange incentive right at the edges. Zager Fuchs has documented a Monmouth County sale where a home listed at $2.49 million received an offer at $2.51 million. That $20,000 bump in the offer pushed the entire sale into the 2.5 percent tier instead of the 2 percent tier, adding more than $12,000 to the seller's tax bill for a price increase that barely moved the needle on proceeds otherwise. The same mechanic applies at any tier line, including the $1 million to $2 million threshold most relevant to North Bergen's bluff-top and waterfront sellers.

Scaled to North Bergen, a bluff-top condo selling at $1.2 million pays a 1 percent fee, or $12,000. The rate has not changed from the old law. What changed is who writes that check. Under the pre-2025 rule, that $12,000 came out of the buyer's closing costs and never touched the seller's net sheet. Now it is a line item against the seller's proceeds, on top of the standard Realty Transfer Fee the seller already owed.

What This Means If You're Pricing Near the Line

1. Bring your attorney in before you set a list price, not after an offer lands. The tier boundaries reward knowing your number in advance.
2. Model your net proceeds on both sides of every $500,000 tier line before you counter an offer, especially between $2 million and $2.5 million where the rate jumps a full percentage point.
3. Confirm your unit's property classification. Condominium and cooperative units both fall under the fee, but the paperwork and the deed language differ, and your closing team should know which applies before drafting the affidavit of consideration.
4. Remember the fee defaults to the seller by statute, but the parties can still reallocate it by agreement in the contract of sale. It is worth raising in negotiation even if it rarely gets fully shifted back.
5. If you or your buyer are 62 or older, blind, or permanently disabled, ask your attorney about the partial exemption available on part of the sale price for an owner-occupied one or two family home, a provision the NJ Realtors trade association outlines alongside the standard exemptions for transfers between spouses or between parents and children.

FAQ

Does this fee apply if my North Bergen home sells for less than $1 million? No. The Graduated Percent Fee only activates once the total consideration exceeds $1 million. Below that line, the standard Realty Transfer Fee still applies, but the additional graduated fee does not.

My unit is a co-op, not a condo. Does the law still reach it? Yes. The statute names Class 4C cooperative units specifically, so a co-op sale above $1 million owes the same graduated fee as a condominium or single-family sale at the same price point.

Is there any way to avoid the fee once my sale price crosses $1 million? The statutory exemptions are narrow: transfers between spouses, transfers between parents and children, and transfers to government bodies or qualified nonprofits, along with the partial senior and disabled exemption noted above. Outside those categories, the fee applies, though buyer and seller remain free to negotiate who actually covers it in the contract.

If you are weighing whether to list a bluff-top or waterfront property above the $1 million line this year, the math is worth running before you set a price, not after an offer forces the question. Derik Palmieri can walk through what your specific building, unit class, and price point mean for your net proceeds. Schedule a free market consultation and get the numbers in front of you before they show up as a surprise on the settlement statement.