ADU addition project - ADU looks to be a go what else is there?

[Levi Koskan]

Hello!

I'm currently under contract on a property in the north Austin area (wooten/crestview). The property was listed with a workshop, in taking a look I noticed it was separately metered, had plumbing and sewage hooked up and was looking good as a candidate for an ADU conversion. ~630 sq/ft.

I've confirmed that it meets the requirements for the city and have appointments with teams to discuss plans and get bids for the conversion project. Final goal would be to occupy the ADU and rent out the main property in a strong effort to house hack. 

The goal of this post would be to get an understanding on what happens once the ADU is up and folks are living in both the main unit and the ADU? For example, there will now be a unit A and a unit B. Does the ADU need to be registered with the city or something? How does the post office or other address dependent systems get updated? 

Advice on best practices for Austin area ADU conversions would be welcomed as well and any lessons learned would be so much appreciated. This will be my second property, but first ADU conversion so any help would be awesome.  

Cheers!

[Tim Hendricks]

Hi Levi,

Congrats! 

1) If you want to ever be able to sell the main house separately from the ADU, you would need to do a condo conversion. If the lot is at least 5750sqft and meets a few other requirements, it's a straight forward process, and will likely cost you in the $5-$10K range in legal and recording fees. The biggest hurdle in going that route would be that you would likely have to refi your mortgage.

If you are just renting one unit, and not selling it, I would not go down the condo conversion route. A lot of unnecessary expense and hassle.

2) You can register the ADU with a sub address (Unit B, etc) with the post office without having to go down the condo conversion route. Mail delivery is completely independent of any other titling/deeding actions.

Good luck!

Tim