ADU or In Law Suites Current California Laws 2020 - YouTube

Hey everybody today we're talking about ad use or accessory dwelling units

I'm Tim Alatorre, Principal Architect of Domum stay tuned. We're going to talk about what you can do

Thanks to some new laws that passed in California on January 1st

There is a whole lot more lots of opportunities

If you thought you couldn't expand or build onto your house before well

These new laws might make it possible for you to get a little extra space

Maybe have your in-laws live on the property or have a little rental income on the side stay tuned

New laws are intended to help the housing shortage in California by making the a development process easier

There's four laws and we're gonna dive into each one of these before we get into bill eight one

Let's talk about some of the common problems people have had with developing accessory dwelling units on their property

so in California and most places, let's say this is your property line you have what are called setbacks and

What this means is that a certain distance from the back of your property

The side of your property and the front of your property you can't build so your house

has to be within the limits of

that boundary right and

Usually most subdivisions, especially the developers try to push the house to the edge of those setbacks

You might have a little space in the back but sides in front are normally right up against the setbacks

If you live on larger property, you're not going to have this problem, but again most subdivisions, so if you want it to build

It'll say prior to January 1st. If you wanted to add onto your house, you are limited to these areas

within the setback

Right. Now there's always been some exceptions to this typically accessory structures like a shed or you know a chicken coop or

Something like that could go outside of the setbacks

but actual livable space where you're sleeping and living in has to be within those setbacks first bill we're going to talk about is

assembly bill number 881 so prior to January 1st

If you wanted to build an accessory dwelling unit you were constrained by the setbacks on the property

So most properties so there's a property line here. We got a property boundaries here

you have certain setbacks like the typical might be let's say you have 10 feet on the side and

15 feet on this side for example might have 25 feet in the front and 20 feet aback

Well your main house

Typically goes right up to that especially if you're in a subdivision. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room

Your house is probably built right on that setback

and if you wanted to build an accessory dwelling unit you were also limited by that boundary unless you

Variance which can be very expensive and time-consuming

So bill 881 now allows you to build that ad you within four feet of the property line

That's a huge change now

There are certain building code regulations that come into effect when you're less than five feet from the property line

But being able to build within four feet opens up a lot of options

Especially if you have a swimming pool or another constraint on the property

now another big change with bill eight eight one is the maximum allowed area for your ad you what it's done is it's

increased the minimum size

That jurisdictions have to allow you to build to 50% of the primary residence

Up to 1200 square feet. So let's say your main house was

3,000 feet you could build a 1200 square foot ad you now let's say your main house is only 1,100 square feet

Well bill a 8 1 also allows you a Mac our minimum size of 800 square feet

So if your house is less than 1,600 square feet you can still build

800 square feet so that's for your primary a to you now also you can have a junior edu and

That one you're allowed up to

500 square feet for that and that can be like if you're doing a garage conversion, right? Most garages are about 400 square feet

so you can do a junior a tu and

Convert that up to 500 square feet and we'll get into that a little bit later about the law that talks about that

So that's a big change. The other thing. Is that bill 8 8 1

restricts

Jurisdictions and reduces the time that they have to respond to you and your application. It used to be 120 days now

It's only 60 days. So that's a big time savings that cuts it in half

And the last thing that bill 881 does is it removes the owner occupancy requirement?

So if you have let's say your main house you're renting it out

you can now build a junior ad you let's say in the garage or tacked on to another part of the house and

A main ad use you can have now three properties three rental properties on one property

So that's a huge change. Okay. So this next bill is an interesting one

It's bill number 6 7 0 now a lot of people watching this might live in an HOA and you're thinking my HOA

Restricts ad use I can't have an accessory dwelling in it loud

Well bill six seven zero

Eliminates H away and CC&R or neighborhood groups from regulating your choice to bill when you're a lot

So if you have an HOA and you're thinking I can't build a to you

All those CC and ours and HOA regulations that prohibit you from doing that are now null and void now

It's gonna be interesting to see as twenty20 plays out exactly how that's going to be enforced but legally in state of, California

Those CCR's those regulations that restrict you from developing an ad you and your garage or attached to your property or house are

Are no longer in effect

Okay, this next Senate bill is one that I really like because it really helps where it hurts in your wallet

Senate bill number 12 changes local agencies ability to

enforce and levy impact fees on you for developing your ad you (Graphic Error less than 750 square feet)

So for example if I wanted to build a 550 square foot ad you as long as I'm under?

750 square feet the city and counties cannot

Assess impact fees for my ad you so if I'm under 750 feet no impact fees now. There still will be

Plan check fees and some other fees that don't count as impact fees

But it can still save you a ton of money

Now if you want to push it and you go bigger like let's say an 800 800 square foot a to you

Well, now those impact fees would be assessed. But if your 750 square feet and lower it's gonna save you a lot of money

That went into effect on January 1st

2020 is assembly bill number 68 now

This one is really interesting because it allows you to not just build one a to you

But to a to use now

what you can do is you have what's called a

Junior accessory dwelling unit or a je ad you and this allows you to have an attached

Unit on your house

Allows let me have a purple one here allows you to do an attaching it

Well, actually my garage here would be in a junior a to you

we can just call that our junior a to you and then it allows you to still build a

second

Ad you that's attached?

So this now effectively makes every property in California that zone single-family residential

Into multi-family residential because you can have one

main

unit a junior edu, and

Then a standard a to you and that's all thanks to Assembly Bill number 68, okay

So today we've covered a lot of stuff and there's still so much more to cover in future videos

We're gonna go over pricing

How do you pay for one of these things the financing side one of the income possibilities?

long-term lease versus a short term lease like Airbnb

We're also going to talk about some of the different ways to build a stick framed prefab

Pre-manufactured we're gonna go into all of that

But today just summarize what we're going to talk about or what we did talk about is we talked about the step backs, right?

So you can now build your ad you within four feet of the property line

the other thing we touched on is the maximum square footage 800 square feet for the primary ad you and

up to 500 square feet for your junior ad you

Remember that the primary ad you can go bigger up to 50% of your house size. It also might be limited by the jurisdiction

typically, we're seeing a thousand to twelve hundred square feet is the max size or your your primary ad you we also talked about a

Parking requirement if you move the parking out of the or if you take parking, for example

And now you can't park in your garage. You don't have to replace that. So that's a huge win there

We talked about the processing time now jurisdictions only have 60 days to process your application and big one we talked about fees

If you go under 750 square feet, that's the magic number impact fees aren't assessed

So hopefully this opened your eyes to some of the options and possibilities

If you have a property you're thinking about putting an Adu on feel free to contact us if you go to dome

Design /a to you. We have a whole section of resources videos

We're gonna be putting up more guides and more information. We also have stock plans you can download

And stay tuned make sure however you're following us whatever system or platform. You're on subscribe like comment all that stuff

That way you don't miss the next videos because we're gonna have a lot of information

So until next time I'm Tim Alatorre with Domum and good luck with whatever you're planning for 2020 we need about