All Forum Posts by: Elisabeth Ihler

I feel like Hale/Mayfair is an undersung neighborhood for families. It’s sandwiched between South Park Hill and Hilltop, less expensive than either and has (IMO) housing stock just as nice as much of Park Hill although it lacks the mansions on parkways. The 9th and CO development is a little generic and franchise heavy but is a nice injection of retail into the neighborhood. 

@Andy Thompson

I haven't actually gotten to the quote stage, just doing preliminary research, but the reading I've done and the data from the few people I've been able to get numbers from are all around the 250K mark.  (the Simple Homes design calculator is estimating it at 218K, but there would be additional demo involved).   I'm more at the stage of trying to figure out whether this is something even worth pursuing as far as an estimate.  

Yeah, the garage is actually our priority (since we have 2 cars, we have the world's most hideous carport in front of the garage at the moment) but we thought it would be reasonable to see whether, instead of just pouring 20K into fixing the garage, we could put some additional money in and turn it into something that would at least be cost-neutral if not an asset. But I don't want to tie up so many of our assets into an ADU at this point.

Does anyone know if the West Denver Renaissance Collaborative is planning to sell their pre-permitted ADU plans at some point? They seem to think their garage model could be built for 150K.

I live in Denver in a SF home that is already zoned for 2 units (U-TU-C).  Our detached 1.5 car garage needs very extensive repairs so it was an obvious choice to look into simply replacing it with a 2 car garage with a small unit on top of it.  However, everything I'm reading suggests this is a 250K+ job and there just doesn't seem to be any way to make this a reasonably profitable venture for us, at least compared with other investment options.

On the other hand, I have friends in Seattle and LA, which have similarly heated real estate markets, who have done similar things for 120-170K.  I don't really understand why the costs are so different.  I get that there are a lot of factors--permitting, local construction resources, materials, etc., but I don't understand why it would be so expensive here compared to cities with many similarities in terms of age of housing stock, cost of living, and lack of affordable housing.  

Extra credit to anyone who can explain to me why Denver's planning department is emphasizing the plan to rezone to allow ADUs much more widely when they seem like such a niche option right now?