Your ADU Contractor in Agoura Hills

Ask who prepares the County Fire package and who upgrades the panel before you ask for a number. Then ask who signs the fixed-price scope. In Agoura Hills a new detached ADU needs a Los Angeles County Fire approval letter at submittal, a fuel modification plan inside the Very High zone, and a 2025 WUI exterior, so a builder who treats fire review as someone else's paperwork costs you a plan-check cycle. Master Construction is licensed and insured under Lic. #1027281, family owned in Ventura since 1994, and carries the drawings, city permit, fire sign-offs and build under one contract with in-house electrical, plumbing, concrete and roofing crews.

The type decides most of it. A garage conversion reuses the slab, walls and roof and skips the solar requirement; a detached cottage buys a foundation, a WUI-rated exterior, a Class A roof and a photovoltaic system. After that the drivers are size, the length of the sewer and electrical runs, whether the original panel can carry an all-electric unit or needs a 200-amp service, a septic approval on an Old Agoura lot, a sloped pad that needs a soils report and stepped footings, oak permits, and the finish level. The city's free pre-approved plans remove the building plan-review fee, not the rest. We walk the lot, then write a fixed-price scope.

Plan on design and approvals first, then construction. As of 2026 the city has 15 business days to declare the application complete and 60 days after that to approve it; a detached unit on the city's pre-approved plans is decided within 30 days of a complete application. The clock starts only on a complete set, and here that set includes the County Fire letter, a fuel modification plan in the Very High zone, a septic or sewer plan, and the school-fee receipt. Construction runs a few months for a garage conversion and longer for a detached cottage, with PV, trusses and any sprinkler package approved as deferred submittals before final.

Yes. The city's Pre-Approved ADU Plans Program offers a studio, a one-bedroom and a two-bedroom, each drawn in Cottage, Ranch and Spanish styles with porch variations and a slab or raised foundation, prepared by RRM Design Group and free to download or pick up at City Hall on Ladyface Court. Using them waives the building plan-review fee and shortens review. The plans are all-electric with no gas service, the photovoltaic system is a separate submittal, and any modification to the drawings drops the project out of the program. You still supply a site plan, load calculations with the subpanel on the plot plan, and a signed hold-harmless statement.

Yes, and on the 1970s and 80s tract lots it is the most direct route. Converting an existing attached or detached garage needs no setback, no replacement parking for the spaces you lose, and no new solar array, because the Energy Code treats it as an addition. Sprinklers apply only if the house already has them. The work is in the details: a slab that may need insulation and a moisture break, egress windows, a rated wall between unit and house, the subpanel, and a sewer tie that may cross an oak's protected zone. Above-garage units are a different permit, new construction with the WUI exterior, priced separately.

Yes. State housing law does not let a fire designation limit how many ADUs a lot gets, and HCD said so to the city in its 2023 and 2025 letters; the 2025 rewrite of the local ordinance responds to those findings. What the zone changes is the construction. Expect a Los Angeles County Fire approval letter at submittal, a Forestry Division fuel modification plan approved before the permit, ignition-resistant exterior assemblies under the 2025 Wildland-Urban Interface Code, and County Fire's final before the city's. Zone 0, the 5-ft ember-resistant strip, was still in state rulemaking as of mid-2026, so we design the near-house ground treatment to the draft rule now.

Yes, on leases of 30 days or longer. Agoura Hills does not require the owner to live on the property for an ADU; a junior ADU needs owner occupancy only when it shares a bathroom with the main house, under AB 1154 as of 2026. Short-term rental is out; the city subscribes to a monitoring service that scrapes listing platforms. Tenants come from a mostly single-family city with a thin apartment supply: families placing kids in Las Virgenes USD, people working the Agoura Road corridor, and locals selling a big house without leaving town. Separate sale of the unit needs an AB 1033 ordinance we have not found here.

No. Civil Code 4751 voids any CC&R provision that prohibits or unreasonably restricts an ADU on a single-family lot; reasonable rules on appearance survive, a veto does not. Boards in Morrison Ranch, Fountainwood, Lake Lindero and the other tract associations can still review materials, color and roofline, and the city's own standard already requires the ADU to match the house on materials and color, which leaves the board little to object to. The city does not ask for an HOA letter in its submittal. We prepare the board's architectural package and the MGO Connect set at the same time, so neither review waits on the other.

Yes, under one contract. The feasibility walk reads the fire zone, the oaks, the slope, the panel and the sewer or septic situation, and comes back as a written scope with a recommendation between the city's free pre-approved plans and a custom design. We draw or adapt the set, prepare the County Fire package and any fuel modification plan, file through MGO Connect, and keep the submittal complete so the city's 15-business-day and 60-day clocks actually run. Then our own crews build it: concrete, framing, electrical, plumbing, roofing, drywall and stucco. County Fire's final and the city's final close it out, and the unit gets its own address.