126 projects taught us
exactly how to build yours.
It started with a second unit on my own lot.
In 2007, I bought my first Los Angeles home — a property zoned for two units. There was no ADU industry yet. No streamlined permitting process. No one to call. I figured it out myself: design, permits, construction, tenants. That second unit paid the mortgage.
Over the next decade, I built a career in Los Angeles real estate — flipping homes, managing new construction, and learning the city's planning and permitting system from the inside. When California passed statewide ADU legislation in 2017, I saw what most homeowners were about to walk into: a process that sounds simple on paper and falls apart the moment you try to navigate it alone.
I started CALI ADU to be the company I wished existed when I built that first second unit. One point of contact. Clear pricing. No surprises.
What 126 projects taught us.
The first few years were custom work — every project designed from scratch, every set of plans a one-off. We designed and permitted 126 ADU projects across Los Angeles County. Twenty-eight of those went through full construction management with our partner general contractors.
We learned two things that changed the business:
First, the same problems repeat. Setback calculations. City building department correction cycles. Structural engineering for hillside lots. Title 24 compliance. The problems are not unique — but the first time a homeowner encounters them, they feel impossible. By the fiftieth time, they are a checklist.
Second, custom design is where budgets die. Custom plans mean custom pricing, custom timelines, and custom surprises. Every custom project is a prototype. Prototypes are expensive. We watched homeowners spend $40,000 on design and permitting alone — before a single shovel hit dirt — because nobody told them there was a better way. (We still design custom ADUs for the projects that truly need them — but selectively, and with a clear-eyed conversation about why a Signature Home would not.)
So we built one.
The Signature Home approach.
We took everything we learned from 126 projects and distilled it into nine architect-designed ADU plans — the Signature Home lineup. Studios to three-bedrooms. Single-story and two-story. Every plan pre-engineered, pre-priced, and refined through dozens of LA County permit submittals. The full four-step build path is laid out on our Signature Process page.
The result: transparent pricing that does not change after you sign. Construction schedules set in writing with the licensed GC. Fewer permit corrections because city building departments have seen our plans before. And a build quality that never gets downscaled because the budget ran over — because the budget does not run over.
Our two-story collection is the competitive advantage we are most proud of. No prefab company in Los Angeles offers two-story ADU models. We designed ours from the ground up — the Fairfax, the Venice, and the Culver — because two stories is the only way to build a real family home on a narrow LA lot without surrendering the backyard to do it.
The track record.
What we promise.
Transparent pricing. Your project estimate is detailed and agreed before you commit. We do not send change orders. We do not discover "unforeseen conditions" that cost an extra $30,000 — the plans are pre-engineered and the scope is locked before ground breaks.
Predictable schedules. Your contract locks in a construction schedule. The construction schedule is set in writing in your contract with the independent licensed general contractor who performs the build under separate contract with you.
One point of contact. One person manages your project from design through move-in. You do not get handed off between departments. You do not chase subcontractors. You call one number and that person knows every detail of your build.
See your ADU. In your backyard.
Book a free 15-minute Backyard Review and see any Signature Home placed on your actual lot — before you commit to anything.
Architect-designed · Transparent pricing · Predictable schedule