How-To Guide — ADU Planning & Construction Process
The Lux Construction Group, an ADU expert, and today we want to talk to you about accessory dwelling units, a little bit about the process of who we are.
Luxdevla offers ADU & garage conversion in los Angeles. Get adu design and construction from the experts. Contact us to Get your quote today. Most people staying in Los Angeles are amazed to choose ADU construction as an additional space in their homes. With ADU construction you can convert a garage into a living or extra bedroom, a basement into a small independent house .
So accessory dwelling units, also called ADUs, are basically secondary dwelling units that anybody in California is now allowed to build on their lot.
So any single-family property is allowed to build an Adu, an additional unit on their lot now up to 1200 sqft, and a junior Adu up to 500 sqft that needs to be attached to the property.
Type of ADU and Limit
So technically, any single-family property can now become a triplex. And these ADUs, there are different varieties. You can build new construction, ground up, attached, detached.
It could be garage space that’s converted, it could be attic space, basement space that could be converted into an Adu. So the law says in California, in most cities, you’re allowed up to 1200 sqft, and some cities limit you to 2000 sq ft.
Junior ADUs are limited to 500 sq. Ft. And like I said, they have to be attached to the main house. Based on my experience, what I’ve seen a lot of times, whatever you spend on your Adu to build it, you get that back in equity and a lot more. So right away, it’s a really good investment.
Investment in ADU
And even if you finance 100% of the construction, I would say every case that we have seen, they’ve been cash flowing really well. So overall, it’s a really good investment.
And the law that passed this year allows investors that have rental properties to build ADUs, and they’re now allowed to rent both the front and the back unit out where it used to be, that you have to be owner-occupied so they could have built on all their investment properties.
Laws for ADU
A lot of laws changed this year and some of the important things I’m going to kind of go over real quick. So you guys have a little bit of information on that before we continue. So setbacks have changed.
Meaning any single-family property is allowed to build 4ft away from the property line instead of five. So that’s much better.
So as long as you’re 4ft away from the back and the side property line and six to 10ft away from your main house, whatever space is left you’re allowed to build on development impact fees under 750 square foot construction are eliminated.
That’s the majority of the fees that you’re going to have to pay the city. Anything over 750 is significantly reduced. So that really helps. Parking requirements have changed.
Converting a Garage to Accessory Dwelling Unit
So if you’re converting a garage to an accessory dwelling, you do not need to replace parking.
If you’re building an additional unit, as long as you’re half a mile away from public transit, meaning a bus stop or train station, you don’t have to replace parking.
If you’re not and you have to replace parking a lot of times. It’s pretty easy to get away with it. All you do is designate a spot in the front of your property to be the designated parking lot.
Oftentimes we get away with this pretty easily. Multi-families are now allowed to have ADUs starting this year. So if you have a Duplex, you can add additional two units.
And if you have an existing space within the building, then it can actually be three units. And the more units you have, the more ADUs you’re allowed to build, there’s a formula to it.
HOA Community Restriction
HOAs are not allowed to stop you anymore. So if you live in an HOA community, they cannot tell you you cannot build an Adu anymore. So that’s very good. If you’re that type of a community, legal units, un-permitted, garage, conversions or Backhouses are now allowed to legalize it without being penalized.
So you can go to the city and basically get permits for what you already have. You have five years to fix this without being penalized.
And I said earlier, actually, that you are now also allowed to rent out the front and the back unit where you have to be owner-occupied last year.
Airbnb is not allowed. Unfortunately, these rentals have to be 30 days or longer and the last change that I really like, actually, I was more excited about before was that cities only have 60 days by law starting this year to approve your permits.
However, they are already backed up in most cities. The COVID is a great excuse not to get this done within 60 days and that’s usually the case.
Who We Are?
It ends up taking a little bit longer. So just a little bit about who we are (Lux Construction Group). We are a construction company in Los Angeles.
Primarily we deal in designing and building healthcare centers like a dental office, x-ray or radiology room, soft story retrofitting, basement construction, commercial remodeling and construction.
There’s a lot of pieces that have to fit in place. You have to time it right. And some of the people that need to be involved, architects, engineers, contractors, financing.
And you need to time all of this together so that it works outright. So it’s really hard to find the right people that are qualified that have experience, and that’s why we come in and we help.
Our Work Experience
So we, in our opinion, have access to the best people, best ADU construction contractors, architects, and financing that we could find. That’s because we have to do a lot of research to work with the right people for our business to work.
If they fail, then our business is going to fail and it’s just not going to work out for us. So we have already vetted these people that we work with.
We’ve been to clients, we’ve seen their requirements, we talk to their needs, and by now work with them long enough where we know we are really good at what we can do.
Most importantly, you actually don’t even pay extra by working with any of these people or companies by going through us. And the reason is that we give them, first of all, volume business so they can afford paying us something.
We give them volume business and we take over their marketing. We answer their calls, we have staff to basically manage phone calls and follow-ups and just make sure the process works out well. So we take a big chunk of their operation away.
We take over that. That’s why they can pay us a little bit without charging you more. They also understand that you’re probably going to get bids from other contractors. They have to be competitive for them to get the job anyway. So it’s pretty common sense.
They can’t charge you more with us. You have the option to work with one, get an estimate from one contractor or multiple contracts.
Let’s say you’re new to this, and you have no idea what the process is like, what the timeline is like, how much it’s going to cost.
I’ll be happy to send you two, three, even four different contractors to come to your house, give you a free estimate and explain their process, their timeline.
And they will each give you their idea of how to structure things and how to design things for it to make sense for you.
So that’s kind of all I wanted to talk about today. Thanks for reading this blog.
