Bedminster's Hills Homes: Deed Restrictions and Prices
October 1, 2026
October 1, 2026
The Homes.com local guide to Bedminster notes that when an income-restricted unit in Bedminster's Hills community loses its designation, buyers who couldn't afford regular-price homes may lose access to it at an income-restricted price. Around 600 such units were built into the Bedminster side decades ago to satisfy a state housing mandate, and the status they carry was never designed to last forever.
If you've been comparing prices in The Hills against the rest of Bedminster and wondering why the townhomes run so far under the township's broader numbers, the deed is doing more of the work than the floor plan. A meaningful share of that inventory carries a legal clock from the 1980s, and it has been running out, unit by unit, since well before this year.
The Hills exists because of a 1986 case, Hills Development Company v. Bernards Township, that helped define how New Jersey towns would comply with the state's affordable housing mandates. The project ended up straddling two municipalities, and each took a different path. Bedminster moved first, embracing the planned residential concept and building the higher-density neighborhoods, including income-restricted units, that gave the state mandate somewhere to land. Bernards Township's portion of the shared development followed a more traditional suburban layout, with fewer high-density affordable clusters than the Bedminster side.
What resulted is more than 7,000 homes across both towns, anchored by the Hills Village Center along Routes 202 and 206, which opened in 1988 with Kings Market as its retail hub. A year earlier, developers had donated roughly 36 acres covering the core of the Pluckemin Artillery Cantonment to Bedminster as protected open space, a piece of Revolutionary War history now preserved inside a 1980s planned community.
According to The Hills Development: History of Bedminster and Bernards Township, New Jersey's affordable housing compliance model, born out of the Mount Laurel doctrine, typically gave income-restricted units 30-year deed restrictions rather than permanent affordability.
The wind-down has drawn public attention. In 2021, the Bedminster GOP reported that the administration of recapture fees tied to expiring affordability requirements became a topic in the Bedminster Township Committee election, as 30-year requirements were expiring on hundreds of Hills units. A local history of the development, published in late 2025, still frames the underlying question as open: whether these homes stay affordable or convert to market rate as each deed runs its course.
For a buyer who assumed the discount in The Hills was simply about smaller square footage or an older build, that's the actual mechanism. The lower price was never fully about the house. It was about who was allowed to buy it, and for how long.
| What a buyer notices | What is actually driving it |
|---|---|
| Hills townhomes price well under greater Bedminster | Many carry a 1980s deed restriction tied to a state housing settlement, not open-market pricing |
| Bedminster's tax bill is the lowest in Somerset County | One non-residential property carries an outsized share of the township's tax base |
In September 2026, Bedminster homes were listed at a median price of $528,000, with price per square foot down 17 percent year over year and a median of 16 days on the market. That combination, more listings absorbed quickly at a lower per-square-foot rate, lines up with what you'd expect if a wave of previously restricted inventory is reaching the open market at the same time broader financing costs are doing their own work on demand. It doesn't prove the deed expirations are the sole cause, but it's consistent with a segment absorbing new volume rather than one that simply ran out of buyers.
That matters for anyone using The Hills as a benchmark for what an entry point into Bedminster actually costs. A unit that sold two years ago under an income cap and a unit selling today with that cap gone are not the same transaction, even if the square footage is identical.
Bedminster carried the lowest average property tax bill of any municipality in Somerset County in 2025, at $5,806, compared with $18,279 in Watchung Borough the same year. The township's tax base benefits from AT&T's corporate presence in town, and public property records back that up. The AT&T campus at 1 AT&T Way carries a total assessment of $118.5 million and generates roughly $1.7 million in annual property tax on that parcel alone, a load spread across every other taxpayer's bill in a way that has nothing to do with the size or age of the median home.
Even the mechanics of that number are in motion right now. Bedminster's own tax office has posted a notice that the 2026 and 2027 tax bills are delayed while the Somerset County Tax Board certifies the rate, a small reminder that the figure keeps moving even in a year when the underlying arithmetic hasn't changed. The takeaway holds regardless of the exact bill: a low tax number in Bedminster says something about one large commercial ratable, not about the modesty of the housing stock sitting on top of it.
If you're pricing Bedminster against Bridgewater, Basking Ridge, or Branchburg, don't treat The Hills' price band as a fixed discount. It's tied to a wind-down that has been running for more than a decade and is still active, and it changes the calculation unit by unit rather than all at once. The practical question for a specific listing is whether that unit's deed restriction has already expired or is still in force, since that affects both who can buy it and what it should cost.
Separately, don't read Bedminster's tax bill as proof of a bargain town. Read it as proof of one very large non-residential ratable that happens to sit inside township lines.
Does the Bernards Township side of The Hills carry the same expiring restrictions? Largely no. Bernards Township's portion of the shared development followed a more traditional suburban layout, with fewer high-density affordable clusters than the Bedminster side. The expiration wave described here belongs mostly to Bedminster.
Does a low tax bill mean the homes themselves are modest? Not in Bedminster's case. The town's tax advantage traces to a single outsized commercial assessment, AT&T's campus, rather than to lower home values across the board.
A Hills deed reads differently once you know what to look for. If a unit there is on your list, Lee Opperman can walk through what a specific deed restriction still says, and what changes once it doesn't. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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