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The second half of a manufactured home is ready to fly over the Angiulis’ house in Villa Park on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Melinda and Nicola Angiuli are having the 1,080-square-foot home installed for Melinda’s parents. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Half of a home — prebuilt in a Riverside factory — is hoisted up and over a four-bedroom house in Villa Park on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. “We’re putting a unit in my daughter’s backyard,” said Jean Phelps, 82, who had been in the process of downsizing when all her possessions were destroyed in a storage fire. “I think it’s a really good solution for people, rather than be in a (senior) home of some kind.” (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Workers attach two halves of a manufactured home after it was lifted over a Villa Park house on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Melinda and Nicola Angiuli had the 1,080-square-foot home installed for Melinda’s parents. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Jean Phelps, left, shares a laugh with her son-in-law, Nicola Angiuli, after he and his wife, Melinda Angiuli, had a manufactured home hoisted by a 53-ton crane over their home in Villa Park on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. The Angiulis had the home installed for Jean, and her husband, Lee Phelps. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Jean and Lee Phelps celebrate as workers prepare to hoist their new manufactured their daughter’s Villa Park house, on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. The Phelps’ daughter Melinda Angiuli and son in law, Nicola Angiuli, are having the 1,080-square-foot home installed in their backyard. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Workers attach two halves of a manufactured home after it was lifted over a home in Villa Park, CA, on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. “People are talking about guest houses, ADU’s. I think it’s because of the housing cost,” said Villa Park Chief Building Inspector Bill Tarin. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
A Grove crane with a 197-foot boom lowers the first section of a Fleetwood manufactured home into place in Nicola and Melinda Angiuli’s backyard on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. In 2017, California municipalities issued 4,352 ADU permits, up 63 percent from 2016, data firms Buildfax and Attom Data Solutions reported. In Los Angeles and Orange counties, permits jumped 127 percent. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
An aerial view shows the final half of two sections of a 1,080-square-foot granny flat being lowered into a Villa Park backyard. Melinda and Nicola Angiuli are moving their garage door to the front, installing a new driveway and widening doorways throughout their home so Melinda’s parents can continue living with them. “They can stay forever,” Melinda Angiuli said. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
A Grove GMK5240 crane hoists a 30-foot section of a new manufactured home over the roof of the Angiulis’ house on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Melinda and Nicola Angiuli are having the 1,080-square-foot home installed for Melinda’s parents. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Jean Phelps waves from door of her new home after it was is lifted in two sections over her daughter’s Villa Park house on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Most of the new Southern California backyard homes are rentals, while a sizable number also are built for family members, studies and local contractors say. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Jean Phelps takes a picture of her new home as workers prepare to hoist it over her daughter’s home in Villa Park on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. New state laws seeking remove barriers to granny flat construction, together with a booming economy, fueled a 127 percent increase in permits for secondary homes in Los Angeles and Orange counties, data show. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
A drone captures the installation of a new 1,080-square-foot prefab unit in the backyard of a Villa Park home. State officials and housing experts see backyard homes as part of the solution to the state’s housing shortage. More than half of California’s housing units are single-family homes, according to the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Jean Phelps watches her new home rise over her daughter’s four-bedroom house in Villa Park, on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. “I have all my family close by … and that’s a blessing,” Phelps said. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Richard Ramos, left, and his wife, Irene, review blueprints for an affordable one-bedroom rental they hope to build atop the garage of their Northridge home. Their plans were delayed when the city placed a lien on their home, which they now are seeking to get lifted so they can move forward. “I think it’s definitely a way for us to contribute to (solving) the housing crunch,” Ramos said.(Photo by Dan Watson)
Richard and Irene Ramos plan to spend $125,000 to $155,000 building a one-bedroom apartment atop their garage in Northridge. But first they had to tear out a rec room they built inside the garage without permits. “It’s not an easy process,” Ramos said. (Photo by Dan Watson)
Alexis Rivas, 25, CEO and co-founder of Cover, a Gardena company that builds prefab backyard homes, shows dozens of granny flat floor plans his four-year-old firm has developed. The company handles everything from permits to construction and installation, and its unique software allows homeowners in Los Angeles to find out in minutes whether zoning allows granny flats on their property. (Photo by Jeff Collins, the Orange County Register/SCNG)
Gardena-based backyard home builder Cover specializes in designing sleek, modern homes with floor-to-ceiling windows and doors. Panels are built in the company’s 10,000-square-foot factory, hand-carried into a home’s yard and assembled. A typical one-bedroom costs from $130,000 to $200,000 to build, company officials said.(Photo courtesy of Cover)
Daniel Tellalian, right, is building an “accessory dwelling unit” or granny flat, in the backyard of his Los Angeles home with the help of building contractor Jason Neville, left. The number of ADU permits more than doubled in Los Angeles and Orange counties in 2017 after new state laws passed to encourage them. More legislation has been proposed to help reduce the state’s housing crisis.(Photo by David Crane, Daily News/SCNG)
An artist’s rendering shows a Spanish-style backyard casita by Building Blocks. (Photo Courtesy of Building Blocks)
Daniel Tellalian, left, and contractor Jason Neville stand in the kitchen-living room portion of a new backyard “casita” Neville is building at Tellalian’s rental house. Tellalian is building the secondary rental on the site of an old garage that burned down, financing the $150,000 to $160,000 project in part with insurance money. “It’s safe to say, I would probably not have done this if the state law hadn’t changed,” Tellalian said. (Photo by David Crane, Daily News/SCNG)
Artist’s rendering shows the living room, kitchen and hallway leading to the back bedroom, similar to what Daniel Tellalian’s new backyard rental will look like when completed.Building Blocks was formed in early 2017 and focuses exclusively on designing, permitting, and building backyard “casitas” for homeowners, said Jason Neville, Building Blocks CEO. (Photo courtesy of Building Blocks)
Contractor Jason Neville of Building Blocks, left, and homeowner Daniel Tellalian talk about the progress of the granny flat he is building in backyard of his rental home. In Los Angeles alone, secondary home permits jumped five-fold last year to 721 units. (Photo by David Crane, Daily News/SCNG)
Artist’s rendering shows the floor plan of a Building Blocks backyard “casita.” The company’s homes are traditional “stick-built” developments, said CEO Jason Neville. “We have about a half-dozen projects in various stages of design, permitting and construction,” Neville said. “Were ramping up that pipeline to 25 projects annually. (Photo courtesy of Building Blocks)
Daniel Tellalian’s backyard unit is being built around a giant avocado tree. He expects to rent the unit for about $1,500 a month, increasing the property’s total rent by 50 percent to 70 percent, he said. “I was really grateful the (new) ADU policies came on line. I thought, this is the right time,” Tellalian said. (Photo by David Crane, Daily News/SCNG)
The backyard home under construction at Daniel Tellalian’s West Adams district property will match the style of the 1925 main house, replacing a tiny, one-car garage. Tellalian’s family lived in the home and kept it as a rental after moving to a bigger house. (Photo by David Crane, Daily News/SCNG)
Some 15 relatives, friends and neighbors gathered early one July morning on Via Bravo to watch Grandma and Grandpa Phelps’ new house fly.
At 11:30 a.m., a 53-ton crane gunned its engines and hoisted a 30-foot prefab structure 30 feet into the air, pivoted over their daughter’s house and nestled the dwelling onto a rectangle of concrete blocks next to the backyard pool.
“We’re putting a unit in my daughter’s backyard,” said Jean Phelps, 82. “She has a very large lot here in Villa Park. We sold our house, and we’re building a little (unit). It’s 1,000 square feet, and we can be near her.”
VIDEO: Watch as crane hoists new granny flat into homeowner’s backyard
CHART: State, region see steady gains in permits for new granny flats in 2017-18
Out on the street, Bill Tarin, chief building inspector for this tiny Orange County town, looked on. Backyard homes — also known granny flats and mother-in-law units to most and as “accessory dwelling units” or ADUs to urban planners — are all the rage in Villa Park and throughout California as a whole.
The number being installed in Villa Park alone jumped from one or two a year to five or six, Tarin said.
“The economy has driven that pattern,” said Tarin. “People are talking about guest houses, ADUs. I think it’s because of the housing cost.”
The economy, yes. But also a set of new state laws that took effect in 2017, lifting barriers to building secondary homes on a single lot. More state laws are in the works.
Those laws already are having an impact.
In 2017, California municipalities issued 4,529 ADU permits, up 60 percent from 2016, according to an Attom Data Solutions analysis of numbers from property data firm BuildFax.
In Los Angeles and Orange counties, the increase was even greater. The two counties collectively saw permits jump 122 percent to 1,466 units.
The city of L.A. had a 404 percent increase. Santa Ana had a 320 percent gain.
And Carson issued 16 permits last year, up from one the year before — a 1,500 percent gain.
“I do think it’s tied to this legislation that took effect at the beginning of 2017, the goal of which was to streamline the development of ADUs,” said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for Attom.
Numbers for 2018 so far show the trend continuing. California permits through July were up 78 percent compared with the same period in 2017. In the L.A.-Orange County area, permits are up 125 percent so far this year.
The trend has yet to catch on in the Inland Empire, where housing still is relatively inexpensive. Attom/BuildFax numbers show Riverside and San Bernardino county governments issued 233 ADU permits last year, five fewer than in 2016.
But there are exceptions, even in the I.E.
Secondary units doubled last year in Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and San Bernardino.
The increase doesn’t surprise state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, author of two ADU bills adopted over the past couple years.
“We knew that cities had silly ordinances,” Wieckowski said, referring to such requirements as sprinkler systems and payment of developer impact fees.
Once those barriers were lifted, “folks in 2017 rushed down to the cities and said, ‘I want to build my accessory dwelling unit.’ “
Laws effective in 2017 prohibited local ADU bans, eliminated excessive sprinkler requirements or excessive utility connection fees, created exceptions to parking restrictions for homes a half-mile or less from public transit and mandated staff review (as opposed to city council reviews) in some circumstances.
Several new laws are pending to further reduce construction barriers and to allow retroactive permits for illegal units that met the building codes when they were built.
Wieckowski said secondary-unit construction will put a dent in the state’s housing shortage, providing as many as 1 million new units in the future — meeting nearly a third of the state’s projected housing shortfall by 2025.
Since 56 percent of California’s homes are detached houses, the state is well suited to this solution to its housing shortage, said a December study by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. Single-family homes dominate neighborhoods in three-fourths of both Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example.
“Given their prevalence in the state’s residential land use patterns, increasing the number of single-family homes that have an ADU could contribute meaningfully to (solving) California’s housing shortage,” the study said.
Demand among homeowners for these units is way up, according to engineers, architects and construction executives interviewed.
Francisco Garcia, owner of FJ Engineering in Alhambra, said his company used to handle one or two granny flats a year.
“Now it has doubled or tripled,” he said. “Who doesn’t want a legal second unit on their property? It increases their value.”
“Last week I had to turn down about five of them, I was so busy,” added architectural designer Sal Tobar, owner of Casa Blanca Designs SoCal in Burbank. “I do a minimum of five of those ADUs a month.”
Rentals are the primary reason people are building secondary units, construction firms said. Others are adding living space for family members. In many cases, homeowners are moving into the granny flat and turning the main house into a rental or living space for their children’s families.
Homeowner Daniel Tellalian, 48, said he wouldn’t have considered the granny flat he’s now building at his rental home in West L.A. had the law not changed.
“I thought, this is the right time,” Tellalian said.
The new granny flat, which is replacing a garage that burned down, is a Spanish-style “shotgun unit,” matching the 1920s-era main house. At 695 square feet, it has a living room, a small kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom and is located about a half-mile from the Expo Line light rail.
“For a professional or a couple, it’s perfect,” Tellalian said.
He expects to charge about $1,500 a month for the new unit.
All in, the additional unit is costing $150,000 to $160,000 to build.
The permitting process took a few months, with approval essentially occurring over the counter, he said.
“It’s safe to say I would probably not have done this if the state law hadn’t changed,” Tellalian said. “The incremental increase in value probably would not be worth it if I had to go through a major permitting exercise.”
But the process has been anything but easy for middle school Principal Richard Ramos of Northridge, who wants to add a small apartment atop his garage for a young teacher or a student’s family.
His effort got derailed, however, when city inspectors discovered a rec room inside the garage built without permits. He spent $5,100 restoring the garage to its original state and now is waiting for a city inspector to come out, review the work and lift a city code enforcement lien.
Once his loan is approved, Ramos expects to spend $125,000 to $155,000 building the one-bedroom apartment.
Ramos said he doesn’t foresee a problem having a tenant on his property since the homes will have separate entrances and there’s plenty of room on his 12,800-square-foot lot.
But increased density could cause some headaches for neighborhoods, Wieckowski and others concede. Among them could be a shortage of parking.
“Every time we add a granny flat, we add a car. That is an issue,” said Susanne Lee, 79, of Thousand Oaks. Lee, a retired real estate agent, owns two rentals that have been divided into separate units, and she plans to add more at other rental houses she owns.
Still, she said, “can you see where this is going? Pretty soon, it’s going to be like New York City. You’re not going to be able to find a parking spot for miles.”
Kelly Dawn Carpenter, 50, of Long Beach wants to add a granny flat someday to her Belmont Shore home.
But she concedes she did have problems with a backyard tenant years ago while living in Palm Springs.
“Everything was great until he got addicted to drugs,” Carpenter said. “It was all fine until the craziness happened.”
There was a festive atmosphere in Villa Park as family and neighbors waited for a crane with a 197-foot boom to hoist a Fleetwood manufactured home into Nicola and Melinda Angiuli’s backyard.
Melinda’s parents, Jean and Lee Phelps, were in the process of downsizing when they lost all their possessions in a fire at the storage unit they were renting. Now, they were about to have their own home again after living in their daughter’s house for more than a year.
Fruit platters and bagels were laid out as Nicola Angiuli uncorked a bottle of prosecco.
“I feel like this might be the start of something,” Nicola Angiuli said. “Villa Park has humongous lots. People are getting older … this might be the start of something for the future, having parents and children living together.”
The reason for going with a prefab home rather than a “stick-built” cottage is speed and cost, Nicola Angiuli explained.
“These days, prefab you can do it any way you want,” Nicola Angiuli said. “If we were to build it from the ground up, it would have taken a minimum of six months to a year, and it would have doubled the cost.”
Once the Angiuli and Phelps families finalized their order, their home was built in 10 weeks.
A 1,080-square-foot home like theirs typically costs $279,000, said Audrey Silverman, a mobile-home agent who helped the Angiulis buy their prefab home.
As family members watched, workers backed the first of two trailers onto the cul-de-sac in front of the Angiuli home. The big Grove crane positioned a 30-foot-long steel frame above the first section with straps dangling to the ground. Workers affixed straps to the home, and with a mighty roar, the structure lifted into the air.
The crowd, watching from the neighbor’s lawn across the street, held its collective breath as the home floated over the roof of the Angiulis’ four-bedroom house, rotated in the air, then slowly, slowly settled down onto a 30-by-36-foot foundation in the backyard.
An hour later, the second section — with the refrigerator, stove, cabinets and lighting already installed — rose into the air, rotated into position and gradually landed next to its mate, ready for coupling. Workers still needed a couple weeks to finish the flooring, the siding and foundation. But a long ordeal was nearing its end.
Jean and Lee Phelps had looked at Leisure World. They considered moving into a small apartment. The Angiulis, who soon will be empty nesters, looked at buying two condos near each other.
Then the thought finally hit Melinda Angiuli: “Why don’t we build a house behind our house?”
It’s the perfect solution for the close-knit family with college-age grandchildren coming and going.
“We’ve lived in Villa Park 43 years. So we’re happy to stay here,” Jean Phelps said. “We’re within walking distance of Ralphs. I have another daughter who lives near here, so I have all my family close by. … That’s a blessing.”
Was Nicola Angiuli, center, owner of this Villa Park, CA, house, nervous? “A little bit, yes. Wouldn’t you be nervous?” Angiuli’s in laws are moving into this prefab home in his backyard. #realestate #housing #grannyflats #affordablehousing @OCRBiz @SCNG pic.twitter.com/Ed96yeNv5j
— Jeff Collins (@RegJeffCollins) July 18, 2018
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