Overview A Junior ADU, or JADU, is not a backyard cottage. It is a small living space, no larger than 500 square feet, carved out of the walls of your existing single-family home, with its own entrance and an efficiency kitchen. Because a JADU lives inside the...
Overview After a wildfire or other declared disaster, water damage rarely arrives in a single, tidy form, and the answer to who pays depends on what caused the water and where it went. The firefighters who saved the building may have soaked units that never burned. A...
Overview California’s Balcony Law exists because of a tragedy. In 2015, a wood balcony in Berkeley collapsed and killed six young people and injured several more, and investigators traced the failure to dry rot and failed waterproofing, the exact conditions a proper...
Overview California’s HOA fine rules cap most penalties at $100 per violation, but Civil Code 5850 carves out one exception that lets an HOA board impose a higher fine: a violation that may cause an adverse health or safety impact. That exception has quickly...
Overview Drones have become cheap, capable, and widely available, and HOA boards have noticed. What started as an occasional curiosity has become a growing enforcement trend. Some California HOA boards have begun deploying drones, or hiring vendors who operate them,...
Overview Most California HOA disputes involve conflicts between homeowners and their boards. This one is different. It involves people who have no relationship with the HOA at all, no ownership interest, no membership rights, and no legal basis for being there, yet...
