Ocean Acres is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) split amongst Barnegat Township and Stafford Township, in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the CDP’s population was 16,142, of which 925 were in Barnegat Township and 15,217 were in Stafford Township. Ocean Acres is located in the northwestern grow less of Stafford Township and share of Barnegat Township, and is the newest and biggest ration of both communities, with nearly 5,500 lots in an area of 6 square miles (16 km).

Ocean Acres was started in the to the fore 1960s, on a large tract west of the Garden State Parkway sprawling surrounded by Stafford Township and Barnegat Townships. Potential buyers were bused to the site and in its first year, 2,000 lots were sold. The original Ocean Acres fee offered three home designs, two ranch styles and a bi-level design. The native models were located upon New Jersey Route 72, west of the gift site of the Southern Ocean Medical Center, all three are currently used as businesses.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, growth upon the community was slow. Only a handful of the streets were paved, and most homes were used as summer homes. The community offered several recreation centers, such as a lakefront park close the Nautilus Drive entrance (it was eventually leveled to make habit for an expanded lake), a second lakefront park later than tennis and basketball courts off of Forecastle and Canal Drive which doesn’t exist anymore, a bathing beach and pool, and an 18-hole golf course. The pool has previously been removed, but the bathing beach is yet open to swimmers after swine closed for several years throughout the 1990s. While many original recreational centers original to Ocean Acres, many supplementary parks and recreation centers owned by Stafford Township were built past the 1990s.

For years, a state-mandated moratorium on construction west of the Garden State Parkway had limited the 5,500-lot community to fewer than 800 homes. In the 1990s, when the moratorium was lifted and sewer lines were installed; development skyrocketed. Several Place developers built nearly thousands of homes in the 1990s. Large areas of empty land in Ocean Acres were even set aside for new individual subdivisions, such as The Oaks at Stafford development. The Ocean Acres Elementary School opened to grades K-2 in 1999.