Take one oceanblock week in Lavallette next July at a hypothetical $3,000. If a family books it on Airbnb or VRBO, the checkout screen adds New Jersey's 6.625% sales tax and its 5% State Occupancy Fee. That comes to $348.75 on top of the rent. If the same family books the same house for the same week by calling the owner, whose number they got from a neighbor, and the owner doesn't rent out any other units and doesn't use a professional manager, the state adds nothing. The house, the town and the week stay the same. The only thing that changed was the booking channel.
That gap matters to anyone buying a second home here with plans to rent it for part of the summer. Each channel changes what a renter pays at checkout and what paperwork follows the owner. For a Lavallette owner, the channel matters more than it would a few miles in either direction, because Lavallette leaves out the local tax layer that Point Pleasant Beach and Seaside Heights add.
The State Taxes the Channel, Not the House
The rule dates to a 2019 amendment of New Jersey's transient-accommodation law. Since August 9, 2019, a short stay is subject to sales tax and the State Occupancy Fee only if it is obtained through a transient space marketplace or is a professionally managed unit. The Division of Taxation spells this out in Tax Bulletin TB-81R2, issued December 9, 2019 and carrying a February 2022 revision stamp. The Division's hotel and motel occupancy fee page still points to it.
Here is how the bulletin sorts a single summer week:
| How the week is booked | 6.625% Sales Tax | 5% State Occupancy Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Through a marketplace such as Airbnb or VRBO | Applies | Applies |
| A professionally managed unit | Applies | Applies |
| Directly with the owner through ads, referrals or signage, with no professional manager | Does not apply | Does not apply |
| Executed by a New Jersey-licensed real estate broker, keys handed over at the broker's office, no hotel services | Does not apply | Does not apply |
| A lease of at least 90 consecutive days | Does not apply | Does not apply |
The second row reaches more owners than its name suggests. Under the bulletin, a "professionally managed unit" is a rental unit owned or controlled by someone who offers two or more other units for rent during the same calendar year. That threshold depends on the owner's rental portfolio. Hiring a management company has nothing to do with it. Someone who rents a Lavallette cottage and two other units in the same year falls into the taxed category even when every booking comes in by phone.
When a marketplace handles the booking, it also collects and remits the taxes. The owner of a marketplace-booked house never has to add the line item.
The Broker Exclusion Turns on Where the Keys Change Hands
The broker row is the narrowest of the five, and its conditions are specific. To fall outside the definition of a transient accommodation, the property has to be private residential property such as a single-family home, condominium or bungalow. The lessor can't provide maid service, room service, linen changes or other common hotel services. A real estate broker licensed by the New Jersey Real Estate Commission has to execute the rental. And the keys, the code to a keyless lock or any other means of getting in must be given to the tenant at the broker's offsite location.
That last condition means the tenant physically picks up the keys at the broker's office, and on the Barnegat Peninsula that matters. The traditional shore rental, with a weekly or monthly lease signed through a local office and a Saturday key pickup on Route 35, matches the bulletin's description almost exactly. A rental with a lockbox code texted the night before, or one that comes with a weekly cleaning crew, may not qualify. The exclusion covers how the rental is handed over as well as who signed the lease.
Lavallette Is Missing From the Town-Level List
The state layer is the same in every New Jersey town. The municipal layer is not. State law lets certain municipalities adopt their own occupancy tax on transient accommodations. The Division keeps a municipal tax list, and its October 5, 2026 version shows two of Lavallette's neighbors collecting one. Point Pleasant Beach has applied a 3% transient-accommodation tax since July 1, 2020. Seaside Heights has applied 3% since December 1, 2025. Lavallette is not on the list, and neither are Bay Head or Mantoloking.
Here is the same $3,000 marketplace week across the peninsula:
| Town | Taxes on a $3,000 marketplace-booked week | Renter's total |
|---|---|---|
| Lavallette | 11.625% state, $348.75 | $3,348.75 |
| Bay Head | 11.625% state, $348.75 | $3,348.75 |
| Mantoloking | 11.625% state, $348.75 | $3,348.75 |
| Seaside Heights | 11.625% state plus 3% local, $438.75 | $3,438.75 |
| Point Pleasant Beach | 11.625% state plus 3% local, $438.75 | $3,438.75 |
The $90 gap in this example is modest. The tax is a percentage, though, so the gap grows with the rent. An Asbury Park Press report from March 6, 2026 found shore rentals for the 2026 summer booking faster than a year earlier, led by affluent visitors taking expensive homes. On those higher-end weeks, the extra local percentage point spread comes to real money at checkout.
Seaside Heights Shows How the Local Layer Arrives
Seaside Heights' tax took years to reach the checkout screen, and the story explains why the local layer exists at all. The borough council adopted Ordinance 2023-23 on August 16, 2023. It amended the borough's hotel and motel occupancy tax chapter, and every voting member supported it. As Shorebeat reported in May 2025, the borough had long funded its summer services with a 3% tax on hotel and motel rooms. Meanwhile, motels were torn down for condominiums and townhomes, and rentals moved onto digital booking services.
The ordinance extended the 3% to short-term rentals booked through those platforms and made the renter, not the property owner, responsible for paying it. Collecting it was harder. Shorebeat explained that the borough had no practical way to enforce the tax, because visitors paid online and the money went straight to owners' bank accounts. With help from officials in Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Heights worked out a route through the state. The borough sends its ordinance to the Division of Taxation, the state has authorized marketplaces add the local tax at checkout, and the state sends the revenue back to the borough. Mayor Anthony Vaz told Shorebeat, "That's the revenue that is going to be looked at to reduce taxes to pay for those services."
The local layer rides on the same marketplace checkout as the state layer, and both depend on the channel. A week booked outside the marketplace and outside professional management doesn't fit the state's definition of a transient accommodation. Seaside Heights' shift is a reminder that this list changes. The towns on it got there by adopting an ordinance, and the Division updates the list as new ones take effect.
What Lavallette Asks of the Owner Directly
Lavallette doesn't add a tax, and its paperwork is light. The borough's landlord registration form, revised in July 2023, applies to business and rental-property owners and carries a $50 fee. It asks for:
- Property and unit details
- Landlord information, including whether the owner occupies the property
- A custodian or property manager
- An emergency contact
- Proof of liability insurance
Taken together, for a Lavallette owner the decisions that shape a rental week's cost are mostly private ones. Those include which platform to list on, whether the house counts as a professionally managed unit, and whether a licensed broker handles the lease and the key handoff.
None of that settles which channel is right for a particular house. Marketplace bookings bring their own reach and their own fees, and broker-handled rentals have their own costs. Each owner's portfolio and goals decide the comparison. This post covers how the state and nearby towns apply these taxes as of November 2026. It is general information, not legal or tax advice, so confirm your own rental setup with a tax professional or attorney before you rely on it.
A Few Straight Answers
Did New Jersey change these rules recently? P.L. 2025, c.393, approved January 20, 2026, changes how state occupancy fee revenue is allocated starting in fiscal year 2027. The enacted text leaves the marketplace collection provisions in place. The Division's occupancy fee page was last updated November 4, 2026 and still links TB-81R2.
Does a season-long rental change anything? Yes. A lease of at least 90 consecutive days is not a transient accommodation under the bulletin, and the State Occupancy Fee has a separate exemption for stays of that length.
Who actually pays the tax on a marketplace booking? The renter. The State Occupancy Fee is imposed directly on the occupant, and Seaside Heights' ordinance puts its local tax on the purchaser. For an owner, the cost shows up in what renters pay at checkout when they compare one listing with another.
If you are thinking about a Lavallette house that will spend some of its summers rented, the booking channel belongs in the plan from the start, along with how the keys will change hands and what that means for the renters. Edwin O'Malley and Suzanne Van Schoick have handled seasonal rentals and sales along this peninsula for decades and are glad to talk through how a particular house might fit into a rental season.
