What California actually allows on your lot.
Plain-language summaries of the four rules that matter most in LA County. None of this is legal advice, and every city applies the state framework a little differently — which is exactly what the feasibility report is for.
Your ADU can get its own deed.
Cities may opt in to allow an ADU to be sold or conveyed separately from the main house, as a condominium unit. Los Angeles and a growing list of jurisdictions are working through adoption.
This is the piece that changes the inheritance math. A backyard unit stops being a room addition and becomes a titled asset — one you can sell, refinance against, or transfer to a child while you keep the front house.
Watch for: your city must have adopted an ordinance, existing lenders have to consent to the condo map, and an HOA gets created between the two units.
One lot becomes two. Two homes become four.
On most single-family parcels you can request a ministerial urban lot split — no hearing, no discretionary review — and build up to two units on each resulting lot.
Each new lot must be at least 1,200 square feet and roughly 40 percent of the original. You sign an affidavit to occupy one of the units for three years. After that, the second parcel is a separate, sellable piece of real estate.
Watch for: historic districts, high fire severity zones, and parcels where a tenant has lived in the last three years are excluded.
The city has to say yes.
ADU approval is ministerial. If the drawings meet the objective standards, the city approves them — no neighborhood hearing, no design review board, no discretion.
You can pair one detached ADU with one junior ADU carved out of the existing house. Owner-occupancy requirements were suspended, replacement parking cannot be demanded for a garage conversion, and no parking at all is required within half a mile of transit.
Watch for: the 60-day clock only starts on a complete submittal. Incomplete sets are how most projects lose a quarter.
Pre-approved plans skip most of plan check.
The City of Los Angeles maintains a library of standard ADU plans that have already cleared building-code review. Using one collapses the review to site-specific items only.
We will tell you honestly whether a standard plan fits your lot. Narrow parcels, steep grades, and unusual easements usually need a custom set — and a standard plan forced onto the wrong site costs more than it saves.
Watch for: the pre-approval covers the building, not your foundation, utilities, or site work. Those still get reviewed.
Which of these applies to your address?
That is the entire point of the feasibility report. One parcel, one written answer, $250.