By UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, April 22, 2021
“Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) have become an increasingly popular housing choice in California in recent years.
“However, not as much is known about who is building ADUs, and who lives in them.
“[The Terner Center has released] the results of California’s first ever statewide ADU owner survey.
“Among the report’s findings:
- A significant portion of new ADUs (37 percent) cost less than $100,000 to build, and 71 percent of ADUs cost less than $200,000 to construct. For context, Terner Center’s 2020 report on construction costs in projects funded through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program found that each new unit of affordable housing cost $480,000, statewide.
- The median rental price of a new ADU in California is $2,000, ranging from $1,925 in the Central Coast region to $2,200 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“ADUs do provide relatively affordable rental housing units for Californians, confirming previous research… [T]he benefits from this new ADU growth may not be equitably shared. The results of the survey confirm that despite legislative reforms, the ADU revolution has been slow to reach low-income homeowners of color.”
Read the survey report and previous UC Berkeley research on ADUs here.
Read the full research synopsis here. (~2 min.)