Fast forward to today - our detached two car garage has almost been finished into a permitted, quite awesome, ADU - 1 bed/1 bath.

You might be able to determine the likely area to target based on the average age of the homes built in an area and if the majority of homes haven't had permits pulled for updates, but I prefer to grid the city and drive every street. write down the potential houses, go back and look up the owners and send them mail, skip trace them for phone numbers, look them up on social media and in some way contact them.

If your contract did not require permits, it’s on you.

Businesses may only do what they are expressly permitted to do in their founding docs.Aside from the limitations (and public record) that places on your own business, if you take Joe's advice and sell that LLC ... among other things the buyer would have to amend the articles to do anything else.

Especially in California, where recent laws have vastly expedited permitting for subsidized housing, you will likely be getting an ROI years sooner by going the LIHTC route... that's even though the financing is way more complicated, since all that work is on them.

I know why I have yet to get a permit.

A zoning variance that we didn't think we would need resulted in a 151-day waiting period for building permits.

You need permits for things like roof/HVAC which have no value, and a contractor who prices his profit margins added in.

Why would a licensed general contractor ask a home owner to pull their own permits?

How is pulling permits, working with the City on construction, even building ADUs?