Samsung Is Leaving Englewood Cliffs. Your Property Tax Bill Is Not.
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
On September 30, three weeks from now, 739 people lose their jobs at 700 Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs. That date comes from a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Samsung Electronics America filed with the New Jersey Department of Labor, and it is the number every outlet from NJBIZ to Daily Voice has led with since the announcement broke in June. It is a real number and a hard one for the families involved.
It is also not the number that decides whether an Englewood Cliffs property tax bill moves next year. That number is smaller, less dramatic, and far more useful if you are trying to figure out what a corporate headquarters departure actually does to a town famous for keeping residential taxes low by leaning on commercial ratables.
Start with the timeline, because the speed is the story. Samsung moved its North American headquarters into 700 Sylvan Avenue, a building it took over from Unilever, and held a grand opening on September 22, 2025. Then-Acting Governor Tahesha Way spoke at the ceremony, alongside Senator Andy Kim, Representative Josh Gottheimer, and state Assemblywoman Ellen Park. The company had operated in Ridgefield Park for more than three decades before the move, and local officials treated the relocation as a coup, one that beat out competing bids from Jersey City and Hoboken.
Eight months later, on May 29, 2026, Samsung told roughly 1,000 employees internally that the headquarters was moving again, this time to Plano, Texas, consolidating near the company's semiconductor investments in Austin and Taylor. The public confirmation followed on June 1. Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mark Park responded the same week, calling the building "a first-class corporate location" and noting something that got far less attention than the layoff figures: the lease reportedly runs through 2034.
That detail is the whole story if you are trying to understand what this means for anyone who owns, or is thinking about buying, a house in Englewood Cliffs.
Property tax in New Jersey is assessed against ownership and building value, not against whichever company's name is on the lobby directory. Samsung is a tenant. Unilever, according to CoStar's reporting on the deal, still owns the building. When Samsung's badge readers go dark, the tax bill does not go with them.
A Rutgers Bloustein School analysis of public records put a specific figure on this: the property at 700 Sylvan Avenue contributed $720,338.14 in property taxes in 2026. Set that next to what a typical household in the borough pays. Using Ownwell's estimate of a $12,632 median annual tax bill for an Englewood Cliffs home, that single commercial parcel is generating roughly the same tax revenue as 57 median-valued houses combined. That is the number that actually explains why one corporate address can move a town's tax math, and it is also the number that shows why an occupant leaving, while a lessee's obligation to pay rent continues, does not erase that revenue overnight.
The borough's own tax collector's office lists the current general tax rate at 1.165 per $100 of assessed value. Nothing about that figure changes because Samsung's org chart moved to Texas. What could eventually change it is a separate, slower process: if a building sits functionally vacant long enough that its owner successfully argues for a lower assessment at the next reassessment cycle. That is a multi-year fight, not a moving-truck event, and it has not happened here. Track that process if you're watching this over time, but do not confuse it with a tax hike landing in your next bill.
Sylvan Avenue has carried the nickname "Billion Dollar Mile" for years, a reference to the concentration of major corporate campuses along that stretch of Englewood Cliffs. Unilever occupied 700 Sylvan before relocating its own U.S. headquarters to 111 River Street in Hoboken. Samsung backfilled the space less than a year later. That is two headquarters transitions at a single address inside roughly two years, and the borough absorbed the first one without the tax base collapsing.
The corridor still counts CNBC, LG, and Ferrari and Maserati North America among its anchors. Councilman Tim Koutroubas has described the ambition plainly: Englewood Cliffs wants to be known as a hub where one departure gets replaced by the next arrival, not a town that empties out when a single lessee leaves.
That is a strategy, not a guarantee. New Jersey's corporate tax rate sits at 11.5 percent, the highest in the country, and the New Jersey Business and Industry Association has pointed out that the state's Fortune 500 headquarters count fell from 22 companies in 2018 to 15 in 2025. Samsung's exit landed in the same stretch of headlines as ExxonMobil's decision to move its legal incorporation to Texas after 144 years in New Jersey. None of that pressure is specific to Englewood Cliffs, but it is the backdrop every town on this corridor is now underwriting against.
The lease term the mayor cited buys the borough time, not certainty. Between now and 2034, Englewood Cliffs has to do two things: keep the current revenue flowing through whatever arrangement Samsung and Unilever settle on for the unused space, and find the next tenant willing to make the same kind of long-term commitment Samsung made in 2025, and then reversed in 2026.
The borough is already hedging. Public notice records show the Mayor and Council adopted ordinances in early 2026 establishing Sylvan Avenue Overlay Zones C and D, expanding what the corridor is legally allowed to become. That is not proof of a plan to convert 700 Sylvan Avenue into something other than office space. It is evidence that officials are building optionality into a corridor that has now watched two Fortune 500 tenants exit the same address inside two years, which is exactly what a town does when it expects more turnover, not less.
If you are comparing Englewood Cliffs against another Bergen County town and the pitch includes some version of "low taxes because of the corporate ratables," ask a more specific question than the rate itself. Ask what share of that ratable base sits in a small number of large commercial parcels, and ask whether those parcels are held under long leases or are exposed to renewal risk in the near term. A town's effective tax rate today tells you less than its concentration risk tells you about the next decade.
For a single-family buyer, this Samsung story is not a reason to avoid Englewood Cliffs. It is a reason to look past the headline the way you'd look past a listing photo. The number that matters is not 739 layoffs. It is $720,338, still on the books, still owed, still separate from whoever happens to be badging into the building on any given morning.
A few direct questions
Does Samsung leaving mean my Englewood Cliffs tax bill goes up this year? Not based on anything in the current record. Property tax is tied to ownership and assessed value, and the borough's general rate has not moved because of this departure.
Will 700 Sylvan Avenue sit empty? Samsung's occupancy is winding down, but the reported lease obligation runs through 2034, and the building's ownership has not changed. Whether Unilever or a future owner finds a new operating tenant before then is the open question, not whether the tax bill continues.
Is this an Englewood Cliffs problem specifically, or a Bergen County pattern? The state-level pressure (NJBIA's cited 11.5 percent corporate tax rate, the drop in in-state Fortune 500 headquarters) is broader than any one town. What is specific to Englewood Cliffs is how much of its low residential tax rate has historically depended on a handful of large corporate addresses on Sylvan Avenue, which is exactly why this particular departure drew more scrutiny than a similar move might in a town without that concentration.
If you are weighing Englewood Cliffs against another Bergen County town and want the actual numbers behind a listing, not just the headline version, Sara Shin Select works this corridor closely enough to walk you through what a tax rate is really built on. Let's connect.
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