New Hampshire has spent the past couple of years opening commercial zones to apartments and making room for accessory dwelling units. A new poll suggests residents want something else, too: the plain old single-family home, on a smaller lot.
About 74% of Granite Staters support "having parts of every town where people are allowed to build single-family homes on smaller lots," according to a St. Anselm College poll reported by the New Hampshire Bulletin Sept. 22. That's a leap from 2025, when the identical question drew 59% support.
The 2026 St. Anselm housing poll was conducted in late August among 1,293 registered New Hampshire voters, with a 2.7% margin of error, the Bulletin reported.
The demand runs into a wall of local rules. Currently, 93% of New Hampshire zoning codes prohibit building single-family homes on lots smaller than 1 acre, according to St. Anselm College's New Hampshire zoning atlas project.
Young residents want those homes. About 80% of residents between 18 and 40 would prefer a single-family home, compared with about 10% who prefer an apartment, according to a September 2025 St. Anselm survey commissioned by the advocacy group Stay Work Play. The preference grows with age, from about 65% of 18- to 25-year-olds to 90% of 36- to 40-year-olds.
Elissa Margolin, director of the Initiative for Housing Policy and Practice at St. Anselm, said the surveys point to surprising demand for single-family homes among young people. "I think we were thinking that younger people were showing a market preference like … they love tiny homes, they love these innovative small spaces," she told the Bulletin. "And they're saying, 'No, we live in New Hampshire. We would like a starter home with a small yard and a white picket fence, but we can't afford one.'"
The poll found broad support for housing in general. Seventy-three percent agreed that "My community needs more affordable housing to be built," and 61% supported more affordable housing in their own neighborhoods. Sixty-three percent said cities and towns should change zoning to allow more housing, with 32% opposed, a big change from 2020, when 29% supported changing zoning and 42% opposed. Sixty-five percent supported public investment in affordable housing in the state budget.
The fight ahead
Lot sizes have been harder to change at the State House than other zoning rules. A 2025 bill by Sen. Keith Murphy, a Manchester Republican, to limit minimum lot sizes for single-family homes to 1 acre fell short in January 2026, when the House voted to send it to interim study, according to the Bulletin.
Rep. Ellen Read, a Newmarket Democrat running unopposed for reelection Nov. 3, says she will bring legislation in 2027 that would treat large minimum lot requirements as "an extraordinary restriction on residential property," putting the burden on towns to prove they're needed. "We have a dozen towns that have areas of 20-acre lot minimums and greater," Read told the Bulletin. She has also filed a request for a bill allowing newly built manufactured homes by right in all residentially zoned areas.
Others push back. Some House members say limits on minimum lot sizes would block reasonable measures to keep town schools and fire departments from being strained. Rep. Michael Harrington, a Strafford Republican, has his own 2027 bill request "relative to planning board authority over subdivision applications." In the 2026 session, the New Hampshire Municipal Association backed bills to repeal the 2025 zoning laws, but those bills failed, the Bulletin reported.
Why it matters for Contractors
Smaller lots change the math on a single-family home. Less land per house can mean lower land and site costs, shorter driveways and utility runs, and more homes per subdivision, which is the kind of starter-home product young buyers in the poll say they want but can't find.
For now, most towns still require an acre or more, so the opportunity depends on local zoning changes or new state law. Builders and site contractors should watch two things: town zoning rewrites already underway to comply with the 2025 state laws, and the small-lot bills expected in the 2027 session. Where a town does allow smaller lots, compact subdivisions with modest homes could be a growing niche for residential builders, excavators and utility crews.
As Margolin put it, "once you change the map, you can change the housing type."