ADUs & Additions in Arcadia

City of Arcadia Development Services Department, Building Services Division. Residential permits are issued by the Building Services Division within the Development Services Department, and plans are submitted through the city's online EDGE portal.

New homes, rebuilds, and two-story or second-floor additions go through the city's single-family Architectural Design Review. Five City Council-recognized homeowners associations (among them the Santa Anita Oaks Association, Rancho Santa Anita Property Owners Association, and the Highlands Homeowners Association) each maintain an Architectural Review Board with design authority over their area, and that approval is obtained before filing with the city.

Oak tree regulations apply, and tree removal plans inside an association area must first be reviewed by that association's Architectural Review Board. We prepare the drawings, make the submittal and handle plan-check corrections ourselves, so you are not the one chasing plan check.

Lot sizes vary sharply by tract. The Upper Rancho and Santa Anita Oaks areas hold estate-scale parcels with wide setbacks, while Baldwin Stocker and Santa Anita Village blocks are noticeably smaller. One local condition that shapes the work: Northern tracts sit on the Santa Anita Canyon alluvial fan, where cobble and dense gravel layers slow pool digs and can force rock hammers or oversized soil export.

All of it, including Santa Anita Oaks, Upper Rancho, Lower Rancho and Arcadia Highlands. Our crews run every job out of our Cahuenga Pass base in Los Angeles, with our own people on site.

Detached ADU: generally $150,000 to $400,000+ across Southern California. What moves it is square footage, finish level, utility runs, and site access; garage conversions typically run well below a ground-up detached build. We give line-item pricing after seeing the site rather than quoting a number over the phone.

Plan a realistic year. Design and engineering typically take one to three months, city plan check and corrections add several more, and construction usually runs four to eight months depending on size and site access.

Usually yes, and often substantially, because the foundation, walls and roof already exist. The trade-offs are that you lose the garage, and older slabs and framing sometimes need upgrading to meet current code.

California ADU law is designed to allow long-term rental, and an ADU is one of the few ways to add rentable square footage to a single-family lot. Short-term rental rules vary by city, so confirm your local ordinance before counting on that income.

Yes. Plans, engineering, Title 24 and the city submittal are all handled in-house, including responding to plan-check corrections. That is a service we sell on its own, so it is not something we hand off.