State law clears way for seniors to downsize into tiny homes

Tricia Hunt’s home in Gilmanton served its purpose. 

It was a new build when she and her husband, Rob, bought it 23 years ago. From their place an hour away, they’d venture up for a drive-by and peer at its progress as it sprouted up from the ground. In that home they raised two children and Hunt, a weaver, set up shop.

On chilly December afternoons, the Hunts and Tricia’s mother, Jane Broadrick, watched as a new home was built piece by piece, this time outside Broadrick’s home in Concord’s South End. They watched the progress just a few feet away from the enclosed porch overlooking the backyard.

Broadrick waited anxiously as the date approached for a certificate of occupancy. The cabinets were done, then the pendant lights and the shower. Finally, the petite dishwasher and the countertops arrived. At 600 square feet, she was glad she asked her architect to put in as many windows as possible.

By the end of the year, Broadrick moved into the tiny home – also referred to as a granny flat, in-law unit or by its government name of “detached accessory dwelling unit.” Her daughter moved from Gilmanton into her three-bedroom ranch. Broadrick had been nervously awaiting a new state law clearing the way for her “little house.” She would have had to try for a variance otherwise. 

Moving to Concord meant the Hunts also could sell the two-story home they had outgrown: its new residents will be a young couple with three kids of their own, Hunt said. She likely would have stayed if it weren’t for the opportunity to move to South Street to be with her mom. 

“We feel like, we’ve raised our family, now move along,” she said. “Now somebody else can come and raise their family there.”

With her children and grandchildren within an hour’s drive, it’s not a reach to imagine four generations of their family at the property Hunt and her mother now share. 

“This property is going to become Grand Central Station,” Hunt said, adding with a laugh, “My mom’s gonna be like, ‘What have I done?’” 

It’s been six months since the state made this type of housing legal statewide, overriding the rules of some local communities like Concord, where granny flats either weren’t allowed or were only permitted as apartments attached to a main house. 

Legalizing detached accessory dwelling units in New Hampshire was seen as low-hanging fruit in a legislative push last session to cut local red tape on housing, and Broadrick is the poster child for why the change passed. Allowing these tiny homes doesn’t open the door to hundreds of units getting added to the market en masse, but could gently increase population density in already residential areas while freeing up existing housing for new buyers – part of what made it less controversial than other housing legislation. The change also won support as a prime opportunity for seniors, helping create options for intergenerational living or space for on-site caregivers, in the nation’s second-oldest state.

The New Hampshire chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) lobbied hard for the state law for that very reason. More than a quarter of New Hampshire’s population — over 368,000 people — is age 60 or older, according to the 2025 Healthy Aging Data Report.

Michael Padmore, an AARP lobbyist, said the top thing they hear from the organization’s members is a desire to age in place, living independently in their own homes rather than at assisted care facilities.

Many older adults are looking to downsize to more manageable homes, Padmore said, and granny flats fit the bill as small, single-story units that allow seniors to live close to their families.

“When there are opportunities for folks to care for their loved ones in the same home or in the same property, it just makes that so much more viable,” Padmore said. “It’s not just more viable and better for the caregiver, but obviously that person who’s getting that care is just getting better care, because it’s just easier for everybody.”

While these tiny homes are now legal statewide, some latitude still exists at the local level to set some ground rules. At town meetings across New Hampshire this year, voters will consider whether to adopt some limitations, like whether or not to cap the maximum size or number of bedrooms, and whether to allow tiny homes on properties used exclusively as rentals.

While numbers from local planners paint a mixed picture about whether the new law will bring a wave of new housing to the region – further reporting on this to come – those making use of this option appear to overwhelmingly be seniors like Broadrick, seeking a way to downsize. 

Some parents are also using the tiny home as a foot-in-the-door of the housing market for their younger adult children, as a cheaper option than buying a new home that isn’t, technically, under the parents’ roof.

Of the local towns that responded to Monitor inquiries, Bow saw the biggest uptick in in-law unit construction last year. After just a few in prior years, eleven were permitted there in 2025. 

All eleven of those were pursuing intergenerational living “in both directions” – either for seniors or for young adults – according to Community Development Director Karri Makinen. 

Town planners across the capital region said the same. Makinen also had more residents reaching out to her about tiny homes, curious about them as a future option.

Most capital region towns already have, or will consider adopting at town meeting, a requirement that the owner live on property with an accessory dwelling unit, either in the main house or the new unit. 

Concord decided against an owner-occupancy requirement in October, which was good news for Jeff Trovato, a local contractor. 

He and his wife, Gabby, are landlords on Washington Street, where a house was long ago divided into apartments. 

The Trovatos spent the past several years redoing the 200-year-old barn in the backyard as a passion project, working nights and weekends and investing their savings into it. Even though it wasn’t a new build, it falls under the rules for accessory dwelling units.

As a result of Concord’s decision, the Trovatos will soon be able to rent it out. What was once a drafty storage space is now a two-bedroom house, ready for new tenants.  

After getting one barn-turned-tiny-house under his belt, Trovato plans to seek out similar opportunities across Concord. He owns a construction company, Dwelling Design & Co., which he named intentionally to capitalize on the growing demand for accessory dwelling units.

“I think it’s fun … creative housing opportunities within the downtown limits,” Trovato said. “There’s no stopping the city from getting denser, especially close to downtown, but there are a lot of really old houses that need attention and shouldn’t be overlooked.”

As Concord weighed the owner-occupancy requirement, one city councilor feared the abuse of tiny homes by absentee landlords or as expensive short-term rentals. 

The Trovatos said that’s not what they’re looking to do. 

“Certainly there’s much more money to be made in short-term rentals, but there’s also much more involvement from the owners, and that’s not really our intention,” Trovato said. “We want to provide a nice space that people want to live in, but we don’t want to be cleaning every day or changing sheets.”

Most city councilors didn’t see Concord, with its ample hotel supply and relatively low overnight tourism, as vulnerable. Rather, they felt the squeezed local rental market and the somewhat brief residence of traveling nurses at the hospital made tiny homes a logical expansion of multifamily properties. 

Boscawen, too, has had no owner-occupancy requirement since it began allowing granny flats in 2024, which planner Ruth Ashby said was a reflection of the town’s “housing-friendly” disposition. 

 Because the vast majority of granny flat builders at the moment are seeking family living, the owner-occupancy rule – for now – doesn’t restrict them. Other rules that state law has left open to towns, however, like size or bedroom limits, could. 

Canterbury requires owners to live on the property, but is currently hammering out the details of how big these structures should be. The town administrator, Ken Folsom, lives in a family-owned attached in-law apartment.

For he and his wife, moving into an in-law apartment was a more financially feasible way to downsize while staying “out in the country.”

“I’m part of that generation where our kids were grown up and had moved out, and we had a big house with a bunch of property and we didn’t need it anymore, and we couldn’t find a piece of property or a house that we wanted to live in around here at a price we wanted to pay, and so we ended up doing an ADU on my daughter’s house,” Folsom said.

It worked out, he added, because now they get to take care of their 8-year-old granddaughter several times a week.

Folsom has watched interest in secondary units like his grow over the past decade, as older and younger folks alike face a jammed housing market. Most of these units in Canterbury, he thinks, are used by families like his.

“I know there are cases where they just rent them out to people,” Folsom said. “But at the same time, with the housing market the way it is, I think it has been a good option for a lot of people.”

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