Where to start with building an ADU

[Justin Knighten]

I'm looking into building a detached ADU on my property like the garage pictured (apartment for rental/AirBnB upstairs, garage for me on the main level). I've talked with the planning department and it looks like I'd be in the clear as far as zoning and such. Where do I go from here? I need to get a rough estimate on the cost in order to figure out if it's something we can afford/that makes sense for us. I don't want to waste a bunch of contractors time if I'm just a tire kicker. How should I go about getting a good ballpark estimate on a project like this?

[Whitney Hill]

Great suggestions from others here. We design & build ADUs in San Diego and are always happy to give ballpark pricing to tire kickers :) I'm sure the same would apply to good contractors out in your area too. 

An advantage of working with a design-build firm (= general contractor that also oversees the design portion of the project, either with on staff architects or partnerships) is that you will be working with a budget target from the beginning. If you go the architect route separately, it's often the case that the focus is on design and it's easy to add expensive details... so you may end up spending thousands to design something you can't afford to build.