Cost segregation in Bergen County

The buildings

Bergen is the most populous county in New Jersey and one of the most varied. Garden apartment complexes from the decades after the war are found in Hackensack, Fair Lawn, Bergenfield, Teaneck, Lodi and many other towns. They are brick buildings of two stories set around parking courts and lawns, where paving, lighting, drainage and landscaping make up a real share of the cost. Along the Palisades in Fort Lee, Cliffside Park and Edgewater stand apartment towers from the sixties and seventies, alongside much newer waterfront rentals. Hackensack has rezoned its downtown and added a considerable number of mid-rise rental buildings, and former corporate campuses in the northern part of the county are being rebuilt as apartments and mixed-use centers.

Routes 4 and 17 through Paramus form one of the densest retail districts in the country, shopping centers and freestanding stores each on its own paved lot. Because of the county’s Sunday closing laws they stand empty every Sunday, which happens to be a convenient time to inspect one. Older office buildings along Route 17 and in Saddle Brook, Rochelle Park and Englewood Cliffs are steadily being converted to medical use.

In the south of the county, Carlstadt, Moonachie, East Rutherford and Lyndhurst make up the Meadowlands industrial district, a very large concentration of warehouses and distribution buildings where truck courts, paving and site utilities are a major part of any study.

Records

There are seventy municipalities in Bergen County and each issues its own construction permits, so the public record is scattered and the owner’s files carry the weight. Garden apartment owners should look for the records of their large periodic projects: roofs, boilers, windows, repaving and kitchen programs. For retail, office and industrial property the leases are needed as well, since they decide whether the landlord or the tenant owns the fit-out.

Common situations

An investor who has bought a garden apartment complex. An investor who has bought an office building on Route 17 and is converting it, floor by floor, to medical suites. The owner of a retail pad or a small center in Paramus who has rebuilt it for a new tenant. A business that has bought or built its own warehouse in the Meadowlands. A developer holding one of the new rental buildings in Hackensack, Fort Lee or Edgewater. The services page explains how each kind of study is approached.

Site visits

Visits are made by car and are arranged with the owner or the property manager. For a complex of many similar buildings, a representative number are entered and the whole of the grounds is recorded. Retail and medical tenants’ spaces are seen with notice.

The page on property types covers retail, office and warehouse buildings, and apartment owners will find more on the page about multifamily cost segregation.

Other areas served

Highbridge Studies works throughout the New York City metro area, including New Jersey: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Westchester, Long Island, Jersey City and Hoboken, Newark and Essex County, Monmouth County and New Jersey.