Backyard ADUs

An 800-square-foot cottage in a Northborough backyard, built for a homeowner who had decided it was time to downsize — that is the project Canary Media described in August 2026 when it wrote about Backyard ADUs. The units arrive in pieces: an October 2025 NBC Boston story described a delivery of two modular boxes and a crane, and the Boston Globe reported in April 2025 that they are built modularly in either Maine or Pennsylvania. The company is a modular ADU design-build outfit headquartered in Brunswick, Maine, building accessory dwelling units and small homes across Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with a Massachusetts phone line and a model unit in Barnstable; the Globe described a 740-square-foot model in Cotuit in April 2025. Its founders say the idea landed in late 2019 — people could put tiny homes in New England backyards — and that the first client came from a neighbour's post in a town Facebook group. Chris Lee leads design and development, and the site describes Austin Gregory, chief of operations and engineering, as a licensed professional engineer in six states including Massachusetts and a licensed general contractor in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts work turns up in the press. Banker & Tradesman ran one of the company's units installed at a Concord property in November 2025, and a Boston.com piece in April 2025 followed a homeowner who was put in touch with the company through a friend. Lee told NBC Boston in September 2024 that he had started the business four and a half years earlier and that interest had exploded in the previous month. On r/massachusetts in August 2026, a commenter called it a reputable regional company. What to pin down is the line between the factory and your yard. The boxes are built out of state and set with a crane, so the schedule and the budget turn on sitework, crane access to the backyard and your town's permitting — ask which of those the company carries and which land on you. For a homeowner in eastern Massachusetts adding a one-bedroom unit for a parent, a tenant, or a downsizing move of their own, this is a builder with finished units on the ground in Massachusetts towns and a model you can walk through on the Cape. Go see the Cotuit model, then get a written scope that separates the module price from everything that happens on your lot.