Separate electric meter at ADU & Duplex project - San Fernando

[Jay Dimacali]

Hello BP community,

I've got an ADU project where I'm almost done but right now I have the Los Angeles DWP saying I can have a separate meter for my ADU. The issue is that I have a duplex where the ADU is being built and I wanted to have 2 separate electric meters for the duplex (it obviously didn't have it before). They don't have separate addresses (previous owner never went through the process so I just note each place as "Unit A" and "Unit B.") The DWP meter spot person said each house needs its own address. My question is: Has anyone dealt with the LA DWP and gotten separate meters for a duplex, triplex, etc.? Anything that can be done 'quickly' to get an approval for separate meters?

Jay

[Chris Mason]

Not a direct answer to your question, but you know what happens down the road when you attempt to refinance, or a buyer attempts to buy using a vanilla mortgage, when it's a duplex with an ADU, right?

It's not directly relevant to your question, but I speak to a lot of people "too late," when they're trying to refi/sell, and their buyer pool is reduced to cash buyers only, thus reducing what they can sell it for by a very non-trivial amount (cash buyers tend not to be dumb, they know there's no actual bidding war now that folks getting mortgages are excluded, no matter what those preapproval letters say). If you've already factored that in, awesome, please disregard this post. 

If not, and if that's potentially concern to you then it might be worth looking into what it takes to make this property a full blown 3-unit property.