Where It All Began
Updated: Nov 19, 2018
Our ADU journey started in April of 2017 with the question of: what if?
What if we demolish his parent's garage and build a little cottage?
Wouldn't that be cheaper than buying a house in Los Angeles??? (Uh, yeah!)
We had been house hunting for months, and coming up short. Our search took us to Van Nuys, West Hills, Reseda, Encino, Lake Balboa, and we couldn't find anything under $500,000, and the homes that were in our budget required lots of renovation, and were too far away from Charles's parents.
It all came down to location. Location. Location.
Charles's parents are in their 80s. They're pretty independent, but we didn't want to be too far away as we know life can change in an instant. The answer seemed obvious. We could have the best of both worlds. Be close to his folks (in their backyard). Not spend all our money and be in debt to our ears. And it just so happened that Governor Brown had made it far easier for folks in LA to turn their garages into ADUs aka guest houses aka casitas aka studios. Effective January 2017, the restrictions that existed before were removed.
April 2017 marked our decision to move forward and pursue this ADU path.
The next big question was: how do we do this?????
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