About
What this is
A building-by-building guide to downtown Jersey City. 245 residential buildings, each with the things you would want to know before signing a lease or an offer, and a link to the public record behind every one of them.
Who it is for
Mostly for someone deciding whether to rent or buy in a particular building, and trying to find out something real about it. Also for people who have just moved and want to know how things work, and for people who already live here.
Where it covers
1.99 square miles. The edges are real lines you can point at, not a mood:
- North, the Jersey City / Hoboken city line.
- East, the Hudson.
- South, the northern edge of Liberty State Park.
- West, the New Jersey Turnpike Extension, and then Monmouth Street where the Turnpike stops short of the Hoboken line.
That takes in Newport, Harsimus Cove, Hamilton Park, the Powerhouse Arts District, the Grove Street blocks, Van Vorst Park, Exchange Place, Paulus Hook, Colgate Center, Liberty Harbor North and the newer towers around 15th to 18th Street.
One edge is ours, not the city's. The Turnpike stops at the interchange near 14th Street and the Hoboken line begins about 2,200 feet further north, with nothing official in between. We drew that stretch along Monmouth Street. It is the one boundary on this map that is a judgment rather than a published line, and we would rather tell you than let you assume otherwise.
How we decide what goes in
A residential building inside the border with 50 or more homes or 10 or more floors, plus well-known smaller condo buildings and anything substantial being built. Office buildings are out. Buildings west of the Turnpike are out, which means Journal Square, the Heights and Bergen-Lafayette are not here.
How we handle neighborhood names
Jersey City publishes historic districts and redevelopment plan areas. They are legal instruments and they often disagree with how people actually speak, Crystal Point sits in a plan area called Harsimus Cove Station, and everyone calls it Newport. Where the two disagree, we use the name people use, and the official plan area still appears on the building's page as a fact.
Condo does not mean you cannot rent
Owners lease out condos all over downtown. A building described as condo may have more homes available to rent than one described as rental, and plenty of what looks like a rental building is individual owners renting individually. Where we publish the type at all, it describes who holds the deed, not whether you can sign a lease.
What we will not do
- We do not take anything from apartment listing sites. Not prices, not unit counts, not even an address to check against.
- We do not name building staff or residents, ever.
- We do not publish anything a visitor sends us without reading it first.
- We do not guess. If a fact cannot be confirmed from a public record, we leave it out and say what is missing.
Who is behind it
It is independent. It is not connected to any building, developer, management company, estate agent, or to the City of Jersey City.