Has anyone used Generic plans for a home to kickoff an ADU???

[Nash Mittelman]

I'm curious if anyone has used generic plans from sites like Houseplans.com to start their ADU build? I kind of know what I'm looking for and can see from the photos that it would work well given my lot size… Just not sure how detailed these plans are, or if anyone has ran into issues with local ordinances? My thought was to purchase the plans for around 500 bucks and then give them to an architect to make adjustments… Would love BP thoughts!

[Neil Ginty]

@Nash Mittelman, Oakland is actually one of the city's with it's own pre-approved plan sets that @Paul Dario Jr mentioned but its is a 25'x25' box so won't work on every site.

The other alternate is doing a prefab, there's quite a few companies doing that now since the 2020 legislation passed. They have their own typical sets of plans that can be tweaked by their own architects/engineers. I will actually be doing just that for my own primary residence. I can draft it but I want to save the construction costs and just do prefab. I will, however, be telling them where to put it on the site. The design challenge with prefabs is making sure you position it right on the site so that it is of maximum benefit to the main house and the ADU.