3 responses to “More than one way to get an ADU”

1. Joe

   October 1, 2022

   Here’s a bit of ADU news about our neighbors up the hill from the DJ:
   Hillsborough residents Monday gave an earful to town officials that they don’t want apartments or rezoning to meet state housing mandates, preferring to stick with a plan to use in-law units instead. As part of its Housing Element process, mandated by the state to zone for 554 new affordable housing units by 2031.
   So far, suggestions (Ed: from the public) have included maximizing the number of ADUs on a lot including incentives to build more. Hillsborough has issued 236 ADU permits since 2014, according to a staff report.
   Plans to rezone designated areas of the town and build a town hall apartment complex were additional options. The apartment complex proposal includes a five-story building with between 88 to 123 apartments on Town Hall property at Floribunda Avenue and El Camino Real. (Ed: More on this later)
   https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/hillsborough-talks-affordable-housing/article_e5d958ee-407e-11ed-84a3-5f3146f537fe?utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1664546425&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline

2. Joe

   April 7, 2025

   This SF Comicle piece had some interesting points. Here are a few snippets woven together:
   Want to build an ADU in California? If you need help from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., be prepared to wait.
   Katherine Anderson is the founder of Danville-based Perpetual Homes, which has built more than 175 ADUs in the Bay Area. She said the difficulty of dealing with PG&E is what surprises homeowners the most about the process.
   “We want to move our clients into ADUs and we’re sitting around waiting for PG&E,” Anderson said. “A lot of times we just find ourselves apologizing over and over to the client about how long PG&E is taking.”
   Some of her company’s projects have been delayed by as much as a year due to PG&E requirements.
   Anderson said she was recently quoted a wait time of less than a month for a 100 amp to 200 amp upgrade with no engineering involved in the North Bay, but that she still expected to be quoted waits of several months for an upgrade to 400 amps that includes engineering time.
   Other ADU aspirants have been put off by the requirement to pay a hefty deposit — usually $2,500 to $5,000 — before PG&E will begin any engineering work. But that’s an industry standard across California utilities, and the amount is applied to the project’s total cost.
   In a written statement, PG&E spokesperson Robison provided tips for homeowners to make the process smoother. They include having a licensed electrician or general contractor advise them on the feasibility of the planned ADU location and panel upgrades; submitting a Residential Load Request Form to ensure the existing neighborhood power grid can handle the additional demand from an ADU; and having a site plan produced by an architect or civil engineer that lays out where the new structure and utilities will go.
   Anderson suggests another idea: Before embarking on an ADU project, tackle the major electrical work first. There are plenty of reasons one might upgrade their electrical panel to 200 or 400 amps that have nothing to do with an ADU, like installing an EV charger or powering a new large appliance. PG&E still has to disconnect and reconnect the cables, but the process is a lot less complex and time-consuming compared to the ADU process, experts say.
   https://www.sfchronicle.com/personal-finance/article/california-adu-pge-delays-20220394.php
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   People think their project is encased in some bubble that ends at their property line. Adding electrical amperage affects the whole leg of the grid they are on and, as noted, it’s not just ADUs. The piece doesn’t mention major projects nearby such as we see all over B’game. Lead times on new transformers are quite long and getting longer. None of the Weiner-like politicians worry about such mundane details. It’s all beneath them.

3. Phinancier

   April 20, 2025

   Reading about Letitia James’ impending legal problems got me thinking about the SB9ers who are building multi-family in single-family zoned neighborhoods. This says it is federal guidelines, so does that apply to SB9-stuffed properties in California? I’m not a realtor or real estate investor.
   New York Attorney General Letitia James didn’t just misclassify her five-unit Brooklyn brownstone as a “4-family dwelling” on mortgage documents. As we’ve previously reported, this distinction is not trivial—properties with five or more units are considered commercial and subject to stricter lending rules. But our latest investigation reveals something even more troubling: on multiple occasions, James described the property as a “1-family,” “1–2 family,” or even “1–3 family” dwelling—designations that offer even greater mortgage advantages than the 4-family classification, including lower interest rates, reduced reserve requirements, and easier approval thresholds.
   This isn’t a minor paperwork discrepancy. Five-unit buildings are classified as commercial properties under federal lending guidelines, subject to stricter underwriting standards, higher down payments, and less favorable terms. By repeatedly downgrading the unit count—sometimes to as low as a single-family home—James may have accessed residential mortgage products exclusively designed for primary residences with substantially more favorable terms.