Long Branch, NJ Home Business: Zoning & Home Occupation Permits (2026)

Section 345-3, the zoning chapter's definitions, sets two distinct home-based-work categories. A "home occupation" is an accessory use of a service character, conducted within a dwelling solely by the residents, occupying no more than 35% of the dwelling's gross floor area, with no exterior change beyond a permitted identification sign and no keeping of stock-in-trade; the code names dressmakers, tailors, milliners, typists and individual music instructors as examples, limited to one client or student on the premises at a time. A "home professional office" is narrower and reserved for a member of a recognized learned profession, doctor, lawyer, architect, engineer or similar, operated entirely within a residential building, employing no more than two people who do not live on the premises, and capped at 40% of the first floor's area.

The definition expressly excludes real estate offices, beauty parlors, barbershops, hairdressing and manicuring establishments, tearooms, tourist homes, mortuary establishments and medical testing laboratories from qualifying as home professional offices. Both uses are listed as permitted uses in residential subdistricts, such as single-family detached and townhouse dwellings in the Broadway Corridor Residential Subdistrict at § 345-11. Section 345-42D(1)(r) then sets the parking demand generated by either use at one off-street space for every 150 square feet of floor area devoted to the home occupation, on top of any parking required for the dwelling itself.