ADU · Saratoga County
Can you build an ADU in Moreau, NY?
Town of Moreau has 14 districts. All districts prohibit ADUs. Check your address to confirm the district that applies to your parcel:
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What the Moreau code indicates by district
The table below shows how each district treats ADUs, alongside the lot and setback standards that govern a second unit. District boundaries and conditions vary, so treat this as a starting point and confirm the district that applies to your parcel.
| District | Min lot | Setbacks F / S / R | Max height | ADU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R-1 One-Family Residential (22,500 sf minimum lot, 100 ft width, 100 ft depth, 25% maximum lot coverage, 800 sf minimum floor area, 38 ft height, 30 ft front / 12 ft side / 30 ft rear. NOTE THE UTILITY LINE READS THE SAME BOTH WAYS AND IS RECORDED AS PRINTED: '22,500 with public water and public sewer, 22,500 without public water'. Every other Moreau residential district penalises the absence of utilities — R-2 goes from 22,500 sf to 32,500 sf and its width and depth from 125 ft to 175 ft — so R-1 stating the same figure on both rungs is unusual, but it is what the schedule says and it is plausible for the Town's sewered core district. MOREAU SETS A MINIMUM FLOOR AREA, WHICH MOST SARATOGA TOWNS DO NOT: every residential schedule carries a Minimum Floor Area column — 800 sf for a one-family dwelling and 1,200 sf for a two-family — so the Town regulates the smallest house you may build, not just the smallest lot. That is a real constraint on a small-footprint or cabin product and it is easy to miss because no neighbouring town has the column. R-1 has the SHALLOWEST SIDE YARD of any Moreau district at 12 ft, which together with the 100 ft lot width is what makes it the Town's most conventional suburban district. Special-permit uses carry their own much larger standards: place of worship 100,000 sf at 50 ft height, public or private school 5 acres, museum and public library 100,000 sf at 10% coverage, day-care center 30,000 sf, playground 120,000 sf. A park is dimensionless — 'None' for lot area, width, depth and coverage. Home occupations and a professional office conducted in a dwelling by its inhabitant are special-permit uses with no dimensional row of their own.) | 0.52 ac | 30 / 12 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| R-2 One- and Two-Family Residential (a genuine utility ladder, and the clearest one in the Town: a one-family dwelling needs 22,500 sf with public water AND public sewer at 125 ft width and 125 ft depth, rising to 32,500 SF WITHOUT PUBLIC WATER at 175 ft width and 175 ft depth. The recorded 0.52 acre is the fully serviced best case; unserviced land needs 44% more lot and 40% more frontage. 25% coverage, 800 sf minimum floor area, 38 ft height, 40 ft front / 15 ft side / 30 ft rear. A TWO-FAMILY DWELLING IS A FULL ACRE — more than four times the serviced one-family minimum — with 175 ft width and depth and a 1,200 sf minimum floor area, so the second unit is expensive in land here. MOREAU SETS A MINIMUM FLOOR AREA, WHICH MOST SARATOGA TOWNS DO NOT: every residential schedule carries a Minimum Floor Area column — 800 sf for a one-family dwelling and 1,200 sf for a two-family — so the Town regulates the smallest house you may build, not just the smallest lot. That is a real constraint on a small-footprint or cabin product and it is easy to miss because no neighbouring town has the column. It is DEED-RESTRICTED under schedule note 4: each Senior Lot must be owned and occupied in fee simple, trust or life estate by at least one resident aged 55 or older, may not be sold or conveyed to anyone but another qualifying senior owner-occupier, and on the death or physician-certified disability of that owner a lawful co-resident may remain only while the senior still owns the lot. A foreclosing mortgagee is exempt from the occupancy restriction but may still only convey to a qualifying senior. Treat the senior lot as a distinct product with a permanently restricted resale market, not as a cheaper narrow lot. Telecommunications towers are a special use on Town-owned land only within the part of R-2 south of Nolan Road, west to the Hudson River and south to Butler Road.) | 0.52 ac | 40 / 15 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| R-3 Agriculture and One-Family Residential (60,000 sf — about 1.38 acres — with 200 ft width and 175 ft depth, 25% coverage, 800 sf minimum floor area, 38 ft height, 40 ft front / 20 ft side / 30 ft rear. This is the first rung of Moreau's three-step rural ladder: R-3 at 60,000 sf, R-4 at 3 acres and R-5 at 5 acres, all sharing the same coverage, floor area, height and yards and differing ONLY in lot area, width and depth. AGRICULTURE IS A PERMITTED PRINCIPAL USE at a separate and larger standard — 5 acres with 250 ft width and depth, no coverage limit ('--'), 35 ft height and 25 ft yards all round, with customary farm structures as the accessory use. That 5-acre agricultural figure is identical across R-3, R-4 and R-5, so what changes between the three districts is the residential standard, not the farm one. MOREAU SETS A MINIMUM FLOOR AREA, WHICH MOST SARATOGA TOWNS DO NOT: every residential schedule carries a Minimum Floor Area column — 800 sf for a one-family dwelling and 1,200 sf for a two-family — so the Town regulates the smallest house you may build, not just the smallest lot. That is a real constraint on a small-footprint or cabin product and it is easy to miss because no neighbouring town has the column.) | 1.38 ac | 40 / 20 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| R-4 Agriculture and One-Family Residential (3 ACRES minimum lot with 250 ft width and 200 ft depth — the middle rung of the rural ladder, more than doubling R-3's 60,000 sf while keeping the identical 25% coverage, 800 sf minimum floor area, 38 ft height and 40 ft front / 20 ft side / 30 ft rear yards. Agriculture is a permitted principal use at 5 acres, 250 ft width and depth, no coverage limit, 35 ft height and 25 ft yards — the same agricultural row as R-3 and R-5. THE PRACTICAL POINT ACROSS R-3, R-4 AND R-5 IS THAT ONLY THE LOT DIMENSIONS MOVE: a house built in R-5 is held to exactly the same bulk envelope as one in R-3, it simply sits on five acres instead of one and a half. Yield, not building form, is what these three districts control. MOREAU SETS A MINIMUM FLOOR AREA, WHICH MOST SARATOGA TOWNS DO NOT: every residential schedule carries a Minimum Floor Area column — 800 sf for a one-family dwelling and 1,200 sf for a two-family — so the Town regulates the smallest house you may build, not just the smallest lot. That is a real constraint on a small-footprint or cabin product and it is easy to miss because no neighbouring town has the column.) | 3 ac | 40 / 20 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| R-5 Agriculture and One-Family Residential (5 ACRES minimum lot with 250 ft width and 250 ft depth — the Town's largest residential minimum and the top rung of the rural ladder, at the same 25% coverage, 800 sf minimum floor area, 38 ft height and 40 ft front / 20 ft side / 30 ft rear as R-3 and R-4. In R-5 the residential and agricultural standards CONVERGE: agriculture is also 5 acres at 250 ft width and depth (at 38 ft height and 25 ft yards, with no coverage limit), so unlike R-3 and R-4 there is no land-area advantage to farming rather than building here. MOREAU SETS A MINIMUM FLOOR AREA, WHICH MOST SARATOGA TOWNS DO NOT: every residential schedule carries a Minimum Floor Area column — 800 sf for a one-family dwelling and 1,200 sf for a two-family — so the Town regulates the smallest house you may build, not just the smallest lot. That is a real constraint on a small-footprint or cabin product and it is easy to miss because no neighbouring town has the column. R-5's accessory-use list is the reference the Resource Protection district points back to — RP's permitted accessory uses are stated as 'Same as R-5' — which makes R-5 the effective template for rural Moreau.) | 5 ac | 40 / 20 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| UR Multifamily Dwelling, One- and Two-Family Residential (THE ONLY DISTRICT IN MOREAU THAT PERMITS MULTIFAMILY, and the numbers are stated PER DWELLING UNIT rather than per lot: 5,000 SF PER DWELLING UNIT — available WITH PUBLIC WATER AND SEWER ONLY — at 125 ft lot width, 125 ft lot depth, 30% maximum coverage, 600 SF MINIMUM FLOOR AREA PER DWELLING UNIT, 30 ft height and 30 ft front / 12 ft side / 30 ft rear. A twenty-unit building therefore needs 100,000 sf of land, and on unserviced land the multifamily use is simply unavailable rather than merely larger. The one- and two-family standards are stated as 'Same as R-2' in every column, so a house in UR follows the R-2 ladder (22,500 sf serviced, 32,500 sf without public water) rather than the multifamily figure. SCHEDULE NOTE 1 IS A REAL GATE: site plan review by the Planning Board is REQUIRED FOR ALL MULTIFAMILY USES in the UR District, so nothing here is purely as-of-right. THIS SCHEDULE IS A SCAN WITH NO TEXT LAYER and was read visually — OCR misread the per-unit lot area as 6,000 sf when the document says 5,000, a 20% density error, so the figure was confirmed against the rendered page rather than the OCR output. Height is 30 ft here against 38 ft in the R districts, which is the one place UR is tighter than its neighbours.) | 0.11 ac | 30 / 12 / 30 ft | 30 ft | No |
| C-1 General Commercial (1 ACRE minimum lot stated in acres rather than square feet — the C-1 schedule is the only one whose lot-area column is headed '(acres)' — with 200 ft width, 175 ft depth, 40% maximum coverage, NO minimum floor area, 30 ft height and 50 ft front / 15 ft side / 30 ft rear. The 50 ft front yard is the deepest in the Town outside Resource Protection, which is what keeps the commercial corridor set back from the road. EVERY PERMITTED USE SHARES THE IDENTICAL ROW — highway-service business such as restaurants, diners and bars; places of public assembly; professional office; boat storage, repair and sales; farm and construction equipment sales and service; commercial greenhouse — all at 1 acre / 200 / 175 / 40% / 30 ft / 50-15-30. That uniformity is unusual in this county, where most commercial schedules price each use differently, and it makes C-1 the simplest district in Moreau to underwrite. Permitted accessory uses are 'Same as R-5'.) | 1 ac | 50 / 15 / 30 ft | 30 ft | No |
| CC-1 Commercial and Communications (a C-1 district with a telecommunications overlay purpose: the permitted principal uses, accessory uses and special-permit uses are all stated as 'SAME AS C-1', so the recorded standards are C-1's — 1 acre, 200 ft width, 175 ft depth, 40% coverage, 30 ft height, 50 ft front / 15 ft side / 30 ft rear. WHAT THE DISTRICT EXISTS FOR IS THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS ROW, which carries its own and very different standards: TELECOMMUNICATION TOWERS AND RELATED EQUIPMENT by special permit of the Board of Appeals or Planning Board on 1 ACRE with 200 ft width and 200 ft depth, 60% MAXIMUM COVERAGE and A 120 FT MAXIMUM STRUCTURE HEIGHT — four times the 30 ft allowed for anything else in the district and by a wide margin the tallest structure permitted anywhere in Moreau. Its setbacks are not tabulated at all; the schedule says 'See Notes 3 and 4' instead, so the tower's siting is governed by those notes rather than by the front/side/rear columns. Anyone assessing a CC-1 parcel should read the tower notes before assuming the 50-15-30 yards apply.) | 1 ac | 50 / 15 / 30 ft | 30 ft | No |
| C-2 Neighborhood Commercial (22,500 sf minimum lot WITH PUBLIC WATER AND PUBLIC SEWER, 100 ft width, 100 ft depth, 800 sf minimum floor area, 30 ft height, 50 ft front / 15 ft side / 30 ft rear — the small-scale neighbourhood counterpart to C-1's one-acre highway commercial, at less than a quarter of the lot area. Permitted uses are local retail: drugstore or pharmacy, stationery store, grocery or meat and produce store, barber and beauty shop, fire station and restaurant. By special permit it adds single-family dwellings, a laundromat, a fueling station, and HOUSING UNITS IN COMBINATION WITH COMMERCIAL FACILITIES — an apartment over a store — which is the only mixed-use residential route in Moreau outside the UR district. MAXIMUM LOT COVERAGE IS RECORDED NULL AND FLAGGED FOR THE TOWN: the schedule prints '400' in the 'Maximum Lot Coverage (percent of area)' column, which is not a possible percentage. The figure was confirmed at full resolution against the scanned page rather than inferred from OCR, so it is genuinely what the document says. The neighbouring C-1 district uses 40%, and 40 is the obvious intent, but that is an inference the Town has to confirm rather than something to record as fact. TWO SCHEDULE NOTES BITE HARDER THAN THE DIMENSIONS: note 1 requires SITE PLAN REVIEW BY THE PLANNING BOARD FOR ALL USES in C-2, so nothing here is as-of-right; and note 2 imposes a THIRTY-FOOT SETBACK NEXT TO ANY R DISTRICT plus required fencing and/or planting along that edge, which on a small neighbourhood lot abutting housing is usually the binding constraint. This schedule is a scan with no text layer and was read visually.) | 0.52 ac | 50 / 15 / 30 ft | 30 ft | No |
| C-3 Residential and Professional (a transitional district pairing housing with professional office use: a single-family dwelling on 22,500 sf with public water, 100 ft width, 100 ft depth, 25% coverage, 800 sf minimum floor area, 38 ft height and 40 ft front / 12 ft side / 30 ft rear. The standards are essentially R-1's — same lot area, width, depth, coverage, floor area and height — with a deeper 40 ft front yard against R-1's 30 ft, and permitted accessory uses stated as 'Same as R-1'. THE DISTINCTION FROM R-1 IS THEREFORE ENTIRELY IN THE USE LIST RATHER THAN THE BULK: C-3 admits professional offices alongside dwellings at residential scale, which is what makes it the Town's transition between neighbourhood and commercial land. MOREAU SETS A MINIMUM FLOOR AREA, WHICH MOST SARATOGA TOWNS DO NOT: every residential schedule carries a Minimum Floor Area column — 800 sf for a one-family dwelling and 1,200 sf for a two-family — so the Town regulates the smallest house you may build, not just the smallest lot. That is a real constraint on a small-footprint or cabin product and it is easy to miss because no neighbouring town has the column.) | 0.52 ac | 40 / 12 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| M-1 General Manufacturing and Industrial (65,340 sf — exactly one and a half acres — with 200 ft width and 200 ft depth, 60% MAXIMUM COVERAGE, no minimum floor area, 38 ft height and 30 ft front / 25 ft side / 30 ft rear. The 60% coverage shared by M-1, MA-1A and M-2 is the highest in Moreau and half again the C-1 commercial allowance, which is what makes the industrial districts the only place a large footprint is dimensionally possible here. Light manufacturing is the permitted principal use, with an accessory building permitted alongside. THE OUTLIER ROW IS ENCLOSED MULTIUSE FACILITIES AT 25 ACRES with 50 ft front, side and rear setbacks — a qualifying-site threshold roughly seventeen times the district minimum, so that use is a land-assembly play rather than an infill one, and its deeper 50 ft yards apply in place of the ordinary 30-25-30.) | 1.5 ac | 30 / 25 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| MA-1A Light Manufacturing A (NAMING CONFLICT FLAGGED FOR THE TOWN: § 149-6 enumerates this district as 'MA-1A Light Manufacturing A Districts', but its own Schedule of Regulations attachment is titled 'M-1A' and headed 'General Manufacturing and Industrial Districts (M-1A)'. Same district, three labels. The roster form MA-1A is used here because § 149-6 is the enumerating section and was amended most recently, through L.L. No. 9-2025 of 9-26-2025. Dimensionally it is IDENTICAL TO M-1 in every column — 65,340 sf (one and a half acres), 200 ft width, 200 ft depth, 60% coverage, no minimum floor area, 38 ft height, 30 ft front / 25 ft side / 30 ft rear — so what separates MA-1A from M-1 is the use list and the mapping, not the envelope. Light manufacturing is the permitted principal use with signs as an accessory use.) | 1.5 ac | 30 / 25 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| M-2 Light Manufacturing and Industrial (80,000 sf minimum lot — about 1.84 acres, the largest industrial minimum in the Town and roughly 22% more land than M-1 and MA-1A require — with 200 ft width, 200 ft depth, 60% maximum coverage, no minimum floor area, 38 ft height and 30 ft front / 25 ft side / 30 ft rear. The permitted principal use is manufacturing, assembly or processing, with an accessory building or signs alongside. LABEL DISCREPANCY WORTH NOTING: § 149-6 enumerates M-2 as 'Light Manufacturing and Industrial Districts' while the schedule attachment is headed 'General Manufacturing and Industrial Districts (M-2)' — the same general/light inversion that affects MA-1A. The roster naming is used here. Since M-1, MA-1A and M-2 share an identical coverage, height and yard envelope, THE ONLY DIMENSIONAL VARIABLE ACROSS MOREAU'S THREE INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS IS THE MINIMUM LOT — 65,340 sf in M-1 and MA-1A against 80,000 sf here.) | 1.84 ac | 30 / 25 / 30 ft | 38 ft | No |
| RP Resource Protection (THE MOST RESTRICTIVE DISTRICT IN MOREAU BY A LARGE MARGIN: a one-family dwelling needs 10 ACRES — twice the R-5 rural minimum and roughly nineteen times the R-1 figure — with 250 ft width and 250 ft depth, 25% coverage, 38 ft height, and 50 FT FRONT, SIDE AND REAR YARDS, the deepest side and rear yards anywhere in the Town. Permitted accessory uses are 'Same as R-5'. The minimum floor area is stated as '800, except' with the exception carried in the schedule notes, so read those before sizing a small dwelling here. AGRICULTURE AND TIMBER remain available at 5 acres with 250 ft width and depth, NO coverage limit and a 30 ft height, which is half the land a house needs — in RP the Town is materially more permissive toward working the land than toward building on it, and that inversion is the point of the district. Quarrying and mining appear in the special-permit column alongside the agriculture and timber row. A ten-acre residential minimum makes RP land effectively unsubdividable at any normal scale; treat it as conservation land with a single homesite rather than as developable acreage.) | 10 ac | 50 / 50 / 50 ft | 38 ft | No |
ADUs vs. short-term rentals in Moreau
No local short-term-rental law on record - which is not the same as permission for Town of Moreau. No short-term-rental provision exists in the Town of Moreau Zoning Law. Chapter 149 was reviewed: § 149-5 Definitions contains no short-term rental, vacation rental, transient-occupancy or tourist-home term, and none of the fourteen district Schedules of Regulations lists such a use. There is no registration or licensing requirement in the chapter. Moreau's schedules are CLOSED USE LISTS — each district tabulates its permitted principal uses, permitted accessory uses and uses permitted by special permit of the Board of Appeals, and a use absent from all three columns has no route to approval — so the absence is more meaningful here than in a town with a general catch-all. That said, whole-house rental of a permitted one-family dwelling is arguably the residential use itself rather than a separate listed use, which is exactly the interpretive question the Town would have to answer. Recorded 'unknown' rather than 'prohibited' because Moreau has never legislated on short-term rental specifically. Absence of a found STR provision is NOT permission. This matters more than usual in Moreau because the Town fronts the Hudson River and sits at the Lake George and southern Adirondack approach, where short-stay demand is real — get a written answer from the Building Department at (518) 792-1030 x5 before underwriting short-term rental income. Separately, New York State has required every short-term-rental host to register the unit with the State through the county registry since 2025, regardless of what the municipality allows, and Saratoga County HAS adopted a county-level short-term-rental programme: a 3% occupancy tax and a MANDATORY county registry, covering any room or space in a dwelling let for under 30 consecutive days. Registration runs two years, an unregistered host faces fines of up to $500, and the booking platform is separately liable for processing an unregistered listing — so Airbnb and Vrbo will delist. The City of Saratoga Springs runs its own registry alongside it. These are separate questions from whether you can build an ADU — a unit you're allowed to add isn't automatically one you're allowed to rent nightly, so check both.
Good to know
- Residential lot minimum0.11–5 ac — an ADU still has to fit the district's lot and setback envelope.
- UtilityNational Grid territory.
- Building dept(518) 792-1030 x5
- Last reviewed2026-07-31
ADU FAQ — Moreau, NY
Are ADUs allowed in Moreau, NY?
Town of Moreau has 14 districts. All districts prohibit ADUs. Check your address with the free ADU checker, or confirm with the building department at (518) 792-1030 x5.
Do I need a special permit for an ADU in Moreau?
No. No district in Town of Moreau permits an ADU, so there is no permit to apply for. Codes change, so verify with the building department at (518) 792-1030 x5 before ruling it out.
Can I use an ADU as a short-term rental in Moreau?
No local short-term-rental law on record - which is not the same as permission for Town of Moreau. ADU occupancy and short-term-rental rules are separate: an ADU you can build isn't automatically one you can rent nightly. Confirm both before you count on STR income.
What an ADU costs to build in Moreau
Permission is one question and budget is another. An 800 sq ft accessory unit here runs roughly $200k–260k at a standard finish, and the per-square-foot rate comes in above a full house because the kitchen, bath, panel and heating plant cost the same either way. See the full cost to build an ADU in Moreau, priced by size.
More on Moreau: Full zoning for new construction · ADU build cost · House build cost · All Saratoga County towns
ADU information for Town of Moreau is compiled from the municipal code (last reviewed 2026-07-31) and provided for decision-support only — not legal or architectural advice. ADU eligibility, size, owner-occupancy and permit conditions vary by district and often carry exceptions; verify with the building department at (518) 792-1030 x5 before relying on any answer. Source: Offsite / Aldo zoning dataset, municipalData.js.