ADU Pass
Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands faces housing pressure from limited land area and population concentration on key atolls. Accessory dwelling units provide a way to add housing capacity on existing residential parcels. ADU Pass helps property owners in the Marshall Islands work through the permitting process for secondary structures.
Map
State ADU details
State financing programs
RMI has no ADU-specific loan or grant program. National-tier residential financing is anchored by the Marshall Islands Development Bank (MIDB), a government development bank headquartered in Majuro that offers home/housing loans to RMI citizens for house construction, purchase, and improvement, alongside commercial and consumer products. The Bank of Marshall Islands (BOMI), a private commercial bank, also writes home loans. Neither names accessory dwelling units; a detached secondary dwelling on the same weto would be underwritten as new home construction or a home improvement. The decisive constraint on any RMI housing loan is land tenure: customary land held by a lineage (bwij) under the iroij/alap/dri-jerbal system is not fee-simple collateral and is essentially never alienable, so a conventional mortgage cannot attach to it the way it would to US fee-simple land. Lenders rely on long-term leases (which themselves require iroij/alap/dri-jerbal consent), on the borrower's wage income and government employment, and on guarantees, rather than on a foreclosable land interest. US federal mortgage products (Fannie Mae, FHA, VA) do not operate in RMI because it is a sovereign Compact nation, not US territory.
State insurance regimes
RMI is a sovereign nation and regulates insurance through its own national government, not through any US state insurance department; there is no US-state FAIR Plan, no US-state wind pool, and no US insurer-of-last-resort regime in RMI. The RMI insurance market is very small and served by a limited number of private carriers and agencies; property coverage, where written at all, is a standard dwelling/homeowner policy. RMI is acutely exposed to coastal hazards: it is one of the lowest-lying nations on Earth, with most land barely a meter or two above sea level, and it faces chronic king-tide flooding, storm surge, drought, and -- as an existential matter -- sea-level rise. This exposure dominates property-insurance pricing and availability and is, in much of the country, the binding constraint on where any dwelling can sensibly be sited. The US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is a US-domestic program and is NOT extended to RMI as it is to US states and territories; RMI is not an NFIP-participating jurisdiction. FEMA's relationship to RMI runs through disaster-assistance provisions tied to the Compact of Free Association (RMI disasters have drawn US disaster declarations, for example for drought and for Typhoon-related and high-tide events) and through FEMA Region 9 coordination, not through NFIP flood-insurance policies. Accessory dwellings are not a separately named insurance category; a secondary dwelling would be covered, where coverage is available at all, under a standard dwelling policy or as 'other structures'.
Known state issues (4)
- other — Any ADU guidance for RMI should not assume US statutes, US lender programs, or NFIP flood coverage apply. The operative legal framework is the RMI Constitution -- especially Article X protecting customary land tenure -- plus customary law and local atoll-government ordinances. Financing realistically means the Marshall Islands Development Bank or the Bank of Marshall Islands, gated by land tenure.
- other — ADU Pass guidance for RMI should treat customary tenure, not a zoning code, as the controlling framework. Adding a dwelling is culturally ordinary but is gated by iroij/alap/dri-jerbal consent; the standard US ADU analysis (zoning allowance, permit timeline, fee-simple financing, payback) does not translate to customary weto land and applies only loosely to the leasehold minority.
- other — On Ebeye there is effectively no buildable land for additional dwellings -- the island is saturated, and adding a unit usually means densifying an already overcrowded weto. The binding constraints are physical land scarcity, the Kwajalein lease geography, and infrastructure capacity (water, sanitation, power), not a zoning ADU code. ADU economics on Ebeye are dominated by these supply constraints; on Majuro the DUD urban corridor faces similar but less extreme land pressure.
- other — Any ADU cost or siting model for RMI must include a severe coastal-hazard and king-tide premium and must not assume NFIP flood coverage is available. Foundation elevation, siting away from the ocean-side shore, and water/sanitation resilience are governed by the same hazard exposure that constrains all construction. Sea-level rise also injects long-horizon uncertainty into any payback analysis for a second dwelling.
Federal (United States) — ADU-relevant rules and programs
Federal ADU law
The United States has no federal statute that directly regulates accessory dwelling unit entitlement or design. Land-use authority over ADUs resides with states and local governments under the traditional police power. Federal engagement is limited to financing (Fannie/Freddie/FHA/VA/USDA), flood insurance (FEMA/NFIP), and discretionary housing programs (HUD), which are recorded in sibling sections of this file.
Federal financing programs
Federal housing-finance agencies and GSEs set nationwide underwriting rules that govern whether an ADU can be financed, appraised, and counted toward mortgage qualifying income. The relevant actors are Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA (HUD), VA, and USDA Rural Development.
Federal tax credits
There is no ADU-specific federal tax credit. ADUs may incidentally qualify for existing federal energy-efficiency and clean-energy tax credits when the ADU construction includes qualifying measures.
Federal housing programs
HUD administers several discretionary programs that can fund ADU-related activity at the grantee's election, but none is an ADU-specific program.