A minimum lot area is the floor a code sets for a conforming lot in a district. It decides whether a parcel can be divided, how much of it a house and its driveway may cover, and, with the setbacks and the height limit, the envelope any addition or rebuild has to fit. In the Northern Valley and the towns around it those floors run from three acres to a 25-foot-wide city lot, and the spread is the first thing to know about a property before anything is drawn. The figures below are the ones each code prints; the full district tables, the coverage and floor-area limits and the source notes are on the town pages linked in the last column.
The two-acre towns
Four codes ask for two acres or more in their largest residence districts. Alpine sets 87,120 square feet, two acres exactly, with 250 feet of width in its R-A and R-R districts. Saddle River sets the same 87,120 square feet with 200 feet of frontage and width in R-1 and R-3. Englewood sets 88,000 square feet with 225 feet of width and 250 of depth in R-AAA. Franklin Lakes goes furthest: 130,000 square feet, about three acres, in the A-130 district where a lot has neither sanitary sewer nor public water, 80,000 square feet where it has one of the two and 40,000 where it has both, rising again to 80,000 where the average grade before grading is 16 percent or more.
The one-acre tier
A 40,000-square-foot district, just under an acre, is the most common large-lot floor in the county’s codes: Alpine’s R-1, Cresskill’s R-40, Demarest’s R-A, Edgewater’s R-40, Franklin Lakes’ A-40, Norwood’s R-40, Old Tappan’s RA-40 and Tenafly’s R-40 all use it. Englewood’s R-AA asks for 44,000 and Haworth’s Residence Zone C for 45,000. Closter belongs here by a different route: its residence areas require 15,000 and 12,500 square feet for an existing lot, but a lot created by subdivision must be at least 43,560 square feet, an acre, in either area.
Town by town
The table gives, for each town, the residence district with the largest minimum lot and the single-family district with the smallest, the height limit the code sets for a house in those districts, and the ordinance each figure comes from. Where a code sets height by stories as well as feet, or sets a different height in its larger and smaller districts, the cell says so.
| Town | Largest residence district | Smallest single-family district | Height limit for a house | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine | R-A and R-R: 87,120 sq ft (2 acres), 250 ft wide | R-3: 7,500 sq ft, 50 ft wide | 35 ft, 2½ stories | Ch. 220, § 220-3D(1) and Attachment 1 |
| Closter | Residence Area A: 15,000 sq ft, 100 ft wide (43,560 sq ft for a lot created by subdivision) | Residence Area B: 12,500 sq ft, 100 ft wide | 28 ft, 2½ stories (30 ft for a house built before 1920) | Ch. 200, Schedule A, § 200-70 and § 200-69G |
| Cresskill | R-40: 40,000 sq ft, 150 ft of frontage | R-10: 10,000 sq ft, 100 ft of frontage | 33 ft in R-40, 30 ft in R-15 and R-10; 2½ stories | § 275-35 |
| Demarest | R-A: 40,000 sq ft, 200 ft of frontage | R-D: 10,000 sq ft, 100 ft of frontage | 33 ft in R-A, no more than 30 ft elsewhere | Ch. 175, Attachment 1 |
| Edgewater | R-40: 40,000 sq ft, 150 ft wide | R-2 and R-3: 5,000 sq ft, 50 ft wide | 32 ft in R-1 and R-2, 35 ft in R-3 and R-40; 2½ stories | Ch. 240, Schedule X-2 |
| Englewood | R-AAA: 88,000 sq ft, 225 ft wide | R-E: 6,500 sq ft, 65 ft wide | 35 ft in R-AAA through R-B, 30 ft in R-C through R-E | § 250-59 |
| Englewood Cliffs | R-A: 10,000 sq ft, 100 ft wide | R-B1: 5,000 sq ft, 50 ft wide | 30 ft above eight points, 32 ft above the curb; 2½ stories | Ch. 30, Schedule A |
| Fort Lee | R-1A: 10,000 sq ft, 100 ft wide | R-3 (one-family): 4,000 sq ft, 40 ft wide | 32 ft, 3 stories | Ch. 410, Schedule IV-2 |
| Franklin Lakes | A-130: 130,000 sq ft with neither sewer nor public water, 80,000 with one, 40,000 with both; 200 ft wide | A-5: 5,000 sq ft, 50 ft wide | 40 ft, 2½ stories (30 ft, 2 stories in A-5) | Ch. 300, Attachment 13 |
| Harrington Park | R-3: 18,000 sq ft, 125 ft wide | R-1: 10,000 sq ft, 75 ft wide | 35 ft | Ch. 350, Attachment 1 |
| Haworth | Residence Zone C: 45,000 sq ft, 150 ft wide | Residence Zone A: 15,000 sq ft, 125 ft wide | 35 ft | Ch. 26, Attachment 1 |
| Norwood | R-40: 40,000 sq ft, 150 ft of frontage | R-7.5: 7,500 sq ft, 75 ft of frontage | 35 ft, 2½ stories | Ch. 233, Schedule A |
| Old Tappan | RA-40: 40,000 sq ft, 150 ft wide | RA-10: 10,000 sq ft, 100 ft wide | 35 ft, 2½ stories | Ch. 255, Area and Bulk Schedule and Table B |
| Ridgewood | R-125: 25,000 sq ft (31,000 on a corner), 125 ft wide | R-2: 10,500 sq ft (14,700 on a corner), 75 ft wide | 30 ft, 2½ stories (35 ft with conditions) | §§ 190-100 to 190-104 |
| Saddle River | R-1 and R-3: 87,120 sq ft (2 acres), 200 ft wide | R-2: 11,250 sq ft, 75 ft wide | 35 ft, 2½ stories | Ch. 210, Schedule B |
| Tenafly | R-40: 40,000 sq ft, 150 ft wide | R-7.5: 7,500 sq ft, 75 ft wide | 30 ft, 2½ stories | Ch. 35, Schedule B |
| West New York | R-M (a one- or two-family house): 2,500 sq ft, 25 ft wide | R-H (a one- or two-family house): 1,500 sq ft | 35 ft; 3 stories in R-M, 2½ in R-H | Ch. 414, Attachment 1 |
Each row restates the figures printed in that municipality’s schedule or section as transcribed on its town page, where the full district table, the setbacks, the coverage and floor-area limits and the omitted rows are set out. Townhouse, multifamily, cluster, overlay, affordable-housing, business and other non-residence districts are not compared here.
How to read the figures
Three things change what a minimum lot means in practice. The first is utilities and ground: Franklin Lakes sizes its largest district by whether a lot has sewer and public water, and Norwood’s Schedule A applies to lots with a slope under 15 percent, with six further tables for steeper ground. The second is the corner: Ridgewood asks for a larger lot on a corner in every single-family district, and several schedules set a separate corner-lot yard. The third is what the code limits besides area: Closter, Old Tappan and Haworth set floor-area ratios that step down as the lot grows and Cresskill’s R-10 ratio falls as the lot widens; Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, Edgewater and Haworth cap impervious coverage separately from building coverage; and Harrington Park ties the bedroom count to lot area.
For a teardown or an addition, the lot-area line is where the envelope begins and the coverage and floor-area lines are where it ends; the Design | Build guide to a teardown and custom home in Bergen County walks through the feasibility read that follows, and how a home is valued explains why the lot’s district is one of the adjustments a comparable sale carries. Minimum lot area does not by itself make an existing smaller lot unbuildable; each code has its own provisions for lots that pre-date it, and those are not summarised here. The same seventeen towns’ property-tax rates are tabulated in the property-tax guide.
This page compares the figures each municipality prints in its own code and is not legal advice or a zoning determination. Whether a particular parcel conforms, and what its district permits, is a question for that municipality’s zoning officer and the owner’s own professionals. Sources read October 25, 2026.