What are ADUs?
An Accessory Dwelling Unit, usually just called an ADU, is a secondary housing unit on a single-family residential lot. The term is an institutional-sounding name, but it’s the most commonly-used to describe this type of housing, such as in-law units, granny flats, and secondary units.
According to Fannie Mae an ADU is typically an additional living area independent of the primary dwelling that may have been added to, created within, or detached from a primary one-unit dwelling. The ADU must provide living, sleeping, cooking, and bathroom facilities and be on the same property as the primary one-unit dwelling.They can be either attached or detached to the main building.
It must:
be subordinate in size to the primary dwelling.
have the following separate features from the primary dwelling:
means of ingress/egress
kitchen*
room or bedroom
bathing area, and bathroom facilities
*Kitchen definition by Fannie Mae “The kitchen must, at a minimum, contain the following: cabinets, a countertop, a sink with running water, and a stove or stove hookup (hotplates, microwaves, or toaster ovens are not acceptable stove substitutes).”
If it lacks any of the items listed above, it shouldn’t be considered an ADU.
Our system has been trained to identify the ADU spaces, however, if you ever need to modify it, you can change it on the Quick Edit on the GLA Flow tool, where you can select the properties for each space.
If you have the ADU property selected it will be included in the ADU calculation, and will have a different color.
The ADU has its own GLA calculation, which can be found in the .txt file and the GLA PDF Report.
