What is a pre-approved plan? #
Pre-approved designs have been partially reviewed for safety and rule compliance, saving you time in the permitting process. All pre-approved designs still require some site planning and permitting applications to complete the process. Note that you cannot customize the building design of a pre-approved plan to take advantage of the faster permitting process – what you submit must be identical to the originally pre-approved plan.
Locally pre-approved plans are site-built designs that have been created by an architect or designer and then reviewed and approved for building code compliance by a jurisdiction.
Agency pre-approved plans are prefabricated designs that have been approved by the state or federal government (California Department of Housing and Community Development or United States Department Housing and Urban Development) during design and manufacturing. All prefabricated plans in our database show as pre-approved because we require this state or federal approval.
What is a pre-designed plan? #
The ADU Plans Gallery also includes a wide variety of ADU designs that may not be pre-approved by your local Building Department but are still available to you for free or for a reasonable fee. Starting with a pre-designed plan instead of completely from scratch can save you months of time and thousands of dollars in your design process. You may decide to work with a professional to continue customizing the design or move directly into site planning and permitting.
We work with established, trusted designers to build our database of pre-designed plans. All plans in our database come from designers who have pre-approved plans somewhere in the state and/or have gone through our review process. Most (possibly all) designs on our platform have been previously permitted somewhere in California.
