New Jersey residents interested in receiving rebate checks on their property taxes have until the end of October to apply for the state's special program.
The Affordable New Jersey Communities for Homeowners and Renters program, known as ANCHOR, gives Garden State homeowners or renters between $450 and $1,750 after they have paid their portion of 2024 property taxes. The exact payout depends on applicants' income level and whether they rent or own. Applicants who are homeowners must have earned less than $250,000 in gross income last year to qualify, while renters must have made less than $150,000.
Applicants who own a home must be state residents who used the property as their primary residence as of Oct. 1, 2024. Renter applicants must have lived in their unit as of the same date, and the rental property must have been subject to property taxes. Renters are eligible for ANCHOR payments even though they don't directly pay the property taxes for the unit they live in.
Owners of condominium units and resident shareholders at co-op buildings are also eligible for ANCHOR payments. Homeowners who gave their local municipality payments instead of taxes, also known as PILOTS, are not eligible.
To be sure, all 50 states have some form of property tax relief programs for their residents, but only a handful, including New Jersey, have their programs formed as paychecks in the mail or direct deposit. New York, Montana and Pennsylvania also send checks to their residents, with New York and Montana only focusing on homeowners and Pennsylvania sharing with homeowners and renters alike. In most states, renters aren't eligible for property tax relief programs. Other states like Nebraska, Rhode Island and Arizona administer property tax relief through credits on a homeowner's bill.
New Jersey sent $2.1 billion in ANCHOR payments in 2024 to 1.8 million residents through the state's treasury department, officials said. The program began in 2022 under Gov. Phil Murphy as a way to address New Jersey residents paying some of the nation's highest property taxes.
"The ANCHOR program continues to ease property tax burdens for millions of residents, and I’m grateful to Treasury staff for ensuring this process is simple and efficient," Murphy said in a statement earlier this year.
New Jersey residents pay the nation's highest effective property tax rate, and homeowners in two counties in particular — Bergen and Essex — bear the brunt of it, a Homes.com analysis from May found.
An effective property tax rate is the percentage a homeowner pays in relation to the assessed value of the home itself.
New Jerseyans, on average, pay property taxes equal to 2.23% of their property's market value. The analysis found that, on average, New Jerseyans shell out $9,300 a year in property taxes.
State officials sent letters to residents in August notifying them that they qualify for the rebate checks. But even residents who didn't get the letter can apply for ANCHOR payments by Oct. 31. New Jersey said it plans to automatically send ANCHOR payments to 1 million residents during a 90-day period that began Sept. 15.