Grand Prairie, TX Accessory Structures: ADU Owner Occupancy (2026)

The Unified Development Code defines "Accessory Apartment" in Article 30, Section 2 as a second complete dwelling unit, with its own cooking, eating, sanitation and sleeping facilities, built into or added onto an existing single-family home or placed in a separate accessory structure on the same lot. " That means the property owner, not just any resident, must actually live in either the main house or the accessory apartment; the arrangement cannot be a duplex-style investment property where both units are leased to unrelated tenants with no owner on site.

This condition sits alongside the unit's other limits, including a 400-square-foot minimum capped at 35 percent of the main home's floor area, a two-bedroom maximum, one parking space per adult resident, and a four-occupant ceiling on the accessory unit itself, and the code notes the use is cross-referenced to the two-family/duplex permissible-use charts in Article 4. Because owner-occupancy is one of the enumerated criteria rather than a suggestion, a property that fails it does not meet the definition of a lawful accessory apartment at all, regardless of whether the physical unit otherwise complies with size and parking standards.