housing
ADU condo sales could skip one inspection in California
AB 2689 would remove a safety check before some accessory dwelling units can be recorded as condominiums. The change applies only where local governments already allow a house and ADU to be sold separately.
California could make a narrow ADU sale path a little easier. Under AB 2689, some accessory dwelling units could be recorded as condominiums without the required safety inspection first, but only in places that already allow separate sales.
- The bill targets a narrow ADU sale path, not all ADUs.
- It would remove a safety inspection before some condo plans are recorded.
- Only local governments that already allow separate ADU sales would be affected.
- Recorded votes show the bill cleared a floor vote.
- In California, accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, can sometimes be sold separately from the main house, but only through a narrow legal path
In California, accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, can sometimes be sold separately from the main house, but only through a narrow legal path. Assemblymember Ávila Farías’s AB 2689 would make that route a little easier by removing a required safety inspection before a condominium plan is recorded.
That matters because every extra step can mean more time, more paperwork and another cost for a homeowner trying to split an ADU into its own condo unit. The bill does not open the door for every ADU. It only reaches places where a local agency has already chosen to allow a primary dwelling and an ADU to be conveyed separately as condominiums.
A checkpoint the bill would lift
Under current law, those local ordinances must include a safety inspection of the ADU before the condo plan can be recorded. AB 2689 would remove that requirement. It would also let the condominium plan be submitted with a parcel map or with a tentative and final map.
The basic structure would stay the same. Existing law still generally keeps an ADU tied to the primary residence unless one of the narrow exceptions applies, including the local ordinance route this bill touches.
Who feels the difference
For homeowners, prospective buyers and small builders, the change is about friction, not reinvention. In the cities and counties that already allow ADU condominiums, the path to a separate sale could get a little shorter and less expensive if one inspection step disappears.
Recorded votes show the bill cleared a floor vote. That does not settle the larger housing debate, but it does show lawmakers are willing to keep peeling back small procedural hurdles around a housing type that has become more familiar across the state.