ADUs & Additions in Cheviot Hills

Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS). Private pools in the City of Los Angeles are permitted through a Combined Building-Mechanical permit, while pools serving more than two dwelling units need separate building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits. Using a City of Los Angeles standard plan on file with LADBS reduces plan check time. Cheviot Hills lies entirely within the city's Hillside Grading Area, so a pool excavation here needs its own LADBS grading permit, although the neighborhood is outside the Hillside Area governed by the Baseline Hillside Ordinance. Ordinance No. 185,475, effective May 2, 2018, changed the Cheviot Hills single-family zoning from R1-1 to R1V2, an R1 Variation Zone with its own residential floor area ratio, encroachment plane, height of mass, lot coverage and massing limits. The northern blocks are also mapped as a Methane Zone or Methane Buffer Zone, where the city's ventilation and methane gas detection regulations apply according to designation category. We prepare the drawings, make the submittal and handle plan-check corrections ourselves, so you are not the one chasing plan check.

Mid-size single-family lots: across roughly 2,300 single-family parcels in LA County Assessor data, the median lot is about 7,500 square feet, the middle half falls between roughly 6,400 and 9,000 square feet, and the median house has about 2,700 square feet of living area. Most of these lots are zoned R1V2. One local condition that shapes the work: The whole neighborhood lies within the city's Hillside Grading Area, so a pool excavation needs its own LADBS grading permit, although it sits outside the Hillside Area covered by the Baseline Hillside Ordinance.

All of it, including Monte Mar Vista, California Country Club Estates and Old Cheviot. 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.