Austin HOME Initiative makes ADUs a solid house hack - free tool to check your lot
I've been looking into adding an ADU in Austin since the HOME Initiative changed the rules. For anyone who hasn't dug into it yet, here's the gist:
- Up to 3 units allowed on any residential lot
- No parking requirements for ADUs
- Can go up to 35ft / 2 stories
- No max ADU size, just 40% lot coverage
The annoying part is figuring out if your specific lot qualifies. You have to dig through TCAD records and city zoning maps, which is a pain.
So I made a free tool that does it for you: https://austinadu.com
Just type in an address and it pulls up the lot size, zoning, permit history, and tells you if you can add units. It covers about 850K properties in the Austin metro.
Has anyone here actually gone through the process of building one? I'm looking at a 7,000 sqft SF-3 lot and trying to figure out if the numbers work. What did you end up spending and how long did permitting take?