Taking on an ADU in MA now or later?

[Ethan McRae]

With the new Affordable Homes Act , come Feb 2nd 2025, you can build an ADU by-right and also use the ADU as a long-term rental in Massachusetts. Said differently, you won't need a special ADU permit to create an ADU.

I'm interested in potentially purchasing a single-family home in eastern MA (Norfolk or Middlesex county), and doing this exactly. The ultimate goal would be to live more affordably with the help of rental income, and then to cash flow after moving out. However, I have some reservations about buying a house before seeing how things shake out after Feb 2nd for a few reasons: 

- Towns seem very unclear about how they will adopt this new law. Many towns don't have any ADU ordinances. The towns that do have ADU guidelines could completely change their rules. I wouldn't want to buy a house today with an ADU plan in mind only to find out that it wouldn't work once guidelines change later on.

- From what I understand, just because you can build an ADU by right doesn't mean you can build whatever structure you want. It seems like towns could dictate if you can build an attached vs detached adu for instance. I worry that towns might make the zoning requirements for ADUs so specific that it would just be too cumbersome/costly to pursue this.

- Towns could potentially challenge the law if they don't love the idea of people living in the backyard of SFHs. That would make it tough to pursue this for obvious reasons. 

Really seems like the smart move is to just hold on and wait to see what happens in early spring next year, but if anyone feels differently, I'm all ears. Is anyone planning on taking advantage of this new law? I'd love to hear about your general strategy.