5 Lies About ADU's (Accessory Dwelling Units)

my channel is totally dedicated to affordable housing options i talk about manufactured homes tiny homes and inevitably in the comments section it comes up with adus and today i decided to talk to an expert when it came to adus and that is ryan o'connell he's going to be sharing with us the common misconceptions with adus the biggest lies when it comes to adus and all the things that you need to know before you decide to put an adu on your property [Music] i found ryan through tick-tock and then i found out he works for a company called inspired adus and he has a wealth of information when it comes to these adus and how you can use them for your property whether you're converting a garage into an adu or you're using a separate unit altogether so i know ryan knows all about all the common challenges when it comes to adus and the most common questions that people have if they're deciding to put one in what would you say is the most common question that comes with uh putting an adu on a piece of property i think you know this how much is this going to cost that's why there's so much interest in prefab because it's like i just go on amazon and buy this right and the truth is site-built houses that are like suitable for people live in are very rarely going to be that buttoned up and so people hear all kinds of different things like somebody in my comments the other day said they're going to build for 30 bucks a square foot that's out there now right that's information on the internet and then other people are like oh minimum it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and everybody's like how can the answer be that far apart like where do i where what's the truth and and the truth is complicated so i try to i try to walk people through that that question with a lot of different perspectives to try to get them to an answer that's satisfying and helps them plan effectively for their project really knowing what your primary goal is right because ads can do so many different things it's like buying a house it's like building a house and and really if you want to house grandma in the backyard or if you want to make a place for your your uh adult children to move back to your state like make that your goal and and then all the variables that come up you were optimizing toward mission accomplished on that goal and and once they internalize it and they do that then all of the other challenges that come up it's like man we can get through this together talk to people like they they often want to jump to like a specific question that's come up like uh how about how big can i build and it's like super specific right and i'm like i'm happy to answer that let's pull up your address you know while it's loading what are you trying to do with the unit uh you know tell me a little bit more about what your goals are for the next 10 years and where do you see yourself a couple decades from now are you still living in this by the end of it i can bring back the information that they've told me about themselves and say like you know are you sure you even want an adu it sounds like you're talking about a home office and like i get it pandemic you and your spouse are working from home kids are home from school you just need sound privacy there are ways to do like unpermitted accessory sheds and get like a little ac unit in there and electricity now hold on a minute when ryan mentions anything about sheds and not needing a permit that is not true of all locations just know in your area you're gonna have to check with the county zoning if you're allowed to have a shed with like an air conditioning unit that it can be required that you do not have to have a permit some areas are going to require and some are not he's specifically talking about his area so just because you heard it on the internet doesn't make it true always double check or even you know sb9 now in california so there's a new rule out here that lets people you could build an adu or you could build a second house and eventually you could sell that house separately whereas the adu you cannot sell separately so it's like okay well could you ever see yourself selling one of the houses if that's the case you might want to investigate this other new option uh and it kind of just depends it depends let's work through all the details that's that's where i that's where i come in what do you think the biggest mistake people make in when they go into uh doing this adu uh adventure there's a lot of different mistakes and some of them happen frequently but they're not a big deal the big one that's a big deal for me is when i meet somebody who is trying to create housing security for themselves or their family and they go into it without the budget to finish so if you if you hear that huge range of costs and you prepare for the kind of medium high cost and it comes out and you save a bunch of money that's a great news story but if you go in thinking i know i'm gonna spend less than the average person and then you get one bad surprise one mistake and all of a sudden you're halfway done with a house and you don't have the budget to finish it that stinks because because you you end up engendering more costs plus you've got a half finished project on your lot luckily most of the projects that peter out happen after they pay for the permit and haven't started construction but but still breaks my heart one of the biggest issues i've always faced when it comes to alternative or affordable housing options is the sewage itself it will require certain kinds of permits for it to be accepted by the county with these being attached to land i wanted to ask ryan what it is we needed to know for sewage when it came to a to use because it is super important sanitation is a big one right so like if you're on a rural lot one of the first things i'm going to talk to you about is septic capacity if you're on a if you're on a city and you're like oh no i'm on city sewer i'm like still not over let's talk about it let's make sure you have capacity because a lot of the time people are talking about a lot of new room capacity and it can it can really surprise them whenever you're working with a contractor or a adu specialist make sure you ask them the right kinds of questions ryan explains what the right kind of questions are but just know that you're interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you you want to make sure that the project that you are having done is something that they specialize in and if they can't answer your questions maybe you should consider hiring a different adu specialist it pays it pays to to work with people who've built ads before if you're in a city that's like really friendly to adus the planning department could be a great resource you're if you have a builder who's built adus before or an architecture designer who's worked on small spaces before then they can be really helpful um but whatever you're doing when you're building your team and make sure you have somebody with like adu superpowers on that team so that you you know uh they're gonna go in and fight adu details now everybody wants to know what the biggest lies when it comes to adus because everybody has advice so i asked ryan what are the biggest lies that he's heard when it comes to adus people say oh it's so easy now it's so streamlined for some people it's going to be easy for for millions of people it is going to be a streamlined process but for millions of people there's still lots of unexpected complications because the way the law works in california the state passed a bunch of blanket laws to make it easier then the local jurisdictions all interpreted them a little differently and some made it really hard on purpose and then the state passed a bunch more blanket laws and there and then they all affect the same body of code and so that's like a bunch of rules about how to build an adu but there's other parts of the code that are like fire code and building code and they all they all interact but it's not super clear how they're supposed to interact and then every city and county has to decide on an individual basis how they're going to interpret it so people go it is super streamlined now and i'm like you don't have to oversell adus adus are awesome like people want a little backyard casita they want to convert their basement or garage into a cool unit like people get why they're cool you don't have to lie to them and tell them it's easy now i've recently heard about adu companies that are a one-stop shop basically they do everything so i wanted to ask ryan a little bit more about that and if there's any kind of dangers of hiring somebody that is a one-stop shop when it comes to adus there's loads of companies that offer that and they all work differently i put them on two ends of a spectrum on one end you've got people who who are trying to do as much as possible in one company and then on the other end you have people who are going to introduce you to a variety of specialists and like you're that you have one point of contact with that company but you actually have lots of different vendors but both of them exist i don't i think there's their pros and cons depending on your individual project and your time like if you're a very busy professional and you get paid hundreds of dollars an hour there's a huge value to getting the person who introduces you to all the different vendors and acts as your one point of contact your time is money and you are happy to pay that that person a little bit of a premium so that they pick the best people that's one model and then on the other side i think uh personally you can't be perfect at everything you can be very in and the more you specialize the the more you're going to unlock in that one specialty and the more blind spots you're going to have to other things when you get a true a to z that's trying to do everything it's very hard for a business like that to be really great at any one thing that it does and so it makes sense if you're if architecture is really important to you get a specialized architect if roi is really important to you make sure that there's a financial planner or somebody who you trust with your financial advice to to work with that a to z firm because that's not their priority or their specialty you know so i would like yeah they exist but i would i would supplement them and staff them up if that makes sense everybody wants to know what the best resources when it comes to building anything whether it's an adu a tiny home a shed it doesn't matter i went ahead and asked ryan what he felt like is the best resources for you if you're deciding to do something like this a lot of the time people people kind of conflate or confuse architecture engineering and a lot of the different parts that go into that pre-phase if uh if you know a lot about about construction then you can piecemeal it out too and do that yourself if you don't then a good designer or architect is a good hand holder like a good client representative in a lot of those cases general contractors are good at different things and some gcs like that part and that they'll be honest about it and they'll tell you yeah i can do that i can handle those questions for you and then other gc's are like go get plans and come back when you're ready for me to like start hammering and like and that's a different kind of builder and like when you're interviewing them it's good to suss that out because like i said before you're building a team and like there's lots of different people and they're all supposed to have strengths and weaknesses and you want the team note to like you want to know the strengths and weaknesses of the team so you can fit the right pieces together um and if it's intimidating you could you could get advice on how to build teams from people so there there are lots of ways to use different team members now another resource i want to add to that is if you're planning on getting a structural engineer because if you're attaching it to a house because your area requires that they be connected somehow you're going to definitely need to have that in order for it to be in compliance not only with your county but you want to make sure that's okay with your insurance company too now i know you get really excited and you end up joining a bunch of groups on facebook because they're all talking about adus but there is some dangers in getting information from people on the internet who knew but you can still get some good information so ryan explains what information you should be taking from these adu groups and which kind of information you probably should just ignore yeah so i have a facebook group where i encourage people to to do that but with a big grain of salt and it's like i want i want you to get as much information as possible right and one of the places you can get information is other real homeowners it's a place i get real information that said like it's strangers on the internet and so you gotta you gotta be able to read read behind read between the lines and see oh this is real information this this person's very transparent they're sharing a lot or like you learn really interesting things i learned stuff from these homeowners because they're on the ground building on a daily basis and so they'll come up with a tax credit that i'm like oh you're applying that interesting you're applying this energy credit to an adu and you're doing a rental agreement with your son so that it applies that's a cool trick i put that in my back pocket i go check with a real lawyer and like that's now i've learned something sometimes that same group will come up with something like oh you don't need to you don't need to do fire sprinklers if your main house doesn't have fire sprinklers it says it in the law and i know because i've dove into that specific subject with that homeowner like yeah but but the homeowner has another problem they've built so far away from the road and the fire hydrant that the fire department is saying yeah in this exception you do need fire sprinklers and so you really got to take legal advice of the grain of salt right like strangers on the internet are not lawyers very important question i asked ryan is if this is the first time you've ever done an adu what would be the very first step when it comes to putting one in you want to know what the laws are in your on your property so it's like what city are you in or are you on a county property and like who is the government person who's supposed to know the rules for you they're not always going to know the rules sometimes you'll teach them some stuff but like figure that person out and like write to them and just say back of the napkin like here's my lot i want to do a little thing over here for grandma give them a personal story like you know a little heart string a little human stuff what am i can i do an adu or is there something else i should look into and they're going to start the process for you they're going to give you the shortcuts and then you go research then spend time googling and watching videos on youtube and that's the starting point figure out what the law is where you live because everybody's got a different law whenever you're talking to any company about putting in your adu you're going to want to know the important questions to ask them first so i asked ryan what questions should we be asking if we're deciding to put an adu on our property because there's a lot of scams out there on the internet when it comes to adus it isn't just adus it's tiny homes and manufactured homes as well so you want to be armed with the right information ahead of time so you know you can spot a scam instantly the really specific answer is like based on your goals if you're like if you know i want the little casita for for mom i need a kitchen in there because she loves to entertain on her own we wanted to like if the more you know about that the more you can find the right adu company for you because you can say that right off the bat and be like how many people like me do you help are most of your customers building a unit for their family member or most your customers real estate developers who are building rental units or do you specialize outside of california maybe they specialize in airbnbs and like conversions into short-term rentals and everybody's got like a niche right and if they can't describe their their typical customer to you that's a problem that's a red flag if you're a gc then you're a licensed contractor you've got an insurance policy on file with the state and and people can look up your license make sure it's current make sure your insurance policy is big enough to be having multiple jobs at once and big jobs not just small rehab um if you're an architect you're licensed if you're a financial advisor or lender you're licensed and a realtor is licensed right and so those regulations um they exist to protect you so you use them if it's a company and you're not sure i think one of the one of the things that gives me a lot of comfort in the early phases because a lot of the time people ask me to look people up and it's kind of online and just drive out and see the thing and i'll be like let's find pictures of projects underway with like them and those pictures if the pictures kind of look generic or stock i'll do a reverse image search on like google reverse image search and just see is this picture all over the internet and lo and behold a lot of the time it is uh if it's all 3d model renderings you're like you know there are stages of a business where all you have is 3d renderings it's like you haven't built yet and a business that only features 3d rendering should be really honest about that and say like this is a rendering and if you ask them how many they built and they say oh we built tons you know can i see some pictures they're like no we only have a 3d renderings that's a bit of a weird like a piece of advice for me as a real estate agent and has a person who's done enough projects around my local area the best thing you could do for yourself is have a good relationship with the building and zoning committee or the building and zoning in your area and walk them through your whole entire plan ahead of time that relationship that you build ahead of time can save you tens of thousands of dollars because they can tell you exactly how you should name your accessory dwelling unit on your property so that way you may not have to pay as much in taxes especially if you made good buddies with them a good relationship means lots of money in your pocket and construction is so real stated so every single lot every single house is different and and you you want somebody builders you want builders who know that region architects you want architects who know somebody at the planning department it's so it's so true that like we just talked about cottage industries it's cottage for a reason like it's it's tough it's tough to streamline and foundations are extremely important because just because your cousin was able to put it on peers does not mean that your area is going to allow your foundation to be on pierce and and the type of adu that you get just because the neighbor across the street was able to um put it on cinder blocks that doesn't mean that the adu that you're getting is going to be able to be put on cinder blocks that your type of home might be completely different so don't discount what the person that is helping you is saying they are an expert in their field so listen to what they have to say especially if they've been doing this for a while because like i said the neighbor across the street might have the wrong foundation all together so in five years you're gonna be watching your your friend's adu falling in a hole you know like leaning off to the on the side this is one that comes up a lot in that facebook group where people will come in and say i don't know my contractor's telling me this i'm really suspicious what do you think and people will give them all kinds of advice some people like ditch that contract or other but but then i always kind of say hey so you've got a bunch of advice what you should do now is go have a real honest conversation with your contractor because things are not on good footing if you already are worried all the advice in the world from us isn't gonna fix your relationship with this person and you're like in deep right now they are building your house go have an honest conversation outcome oriented how do we make this work like i need i need to trust you here's what would help me trust you and remind me that you are a professional that i am paying to do this project ryan connolly with inspired adus has given us some great information so now that you've heard all this are you still considering putting an adu in your yard let me know in the comments section maybe you've actually changed your mind and you want to put in a tiny home or even a small manufactured home if that's the case you were going to want to check out these videos right here my name is christina smallhorn your real estate whisperer and i tell you all this because good real estate information matters

Channel: Kristina Smallhorn

Views: 974

Rating: 4.9402986 out of 5

Keywords: your real estate whisperer, homes for sale, Kristina Smallhorn, real estate, realtor, adus, accessory dwelling unit, accessory dwelling units, manufactured home, affordable housing, what is an adu unit, tiny homes, Lies about ADUS, mobile homes, tiny house build, how to build an adu, what you need to know about accessory dwelling units, information wih ADUS, rules & regulations for ADUS, affordable homes, affordable house

Id: -ZH1alLRqzI

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021