Oceanfront homes
What the water actually costs to own: bluff insurance, what the Coastal Commission will permit, and the fifteen waterfront closings behind the advice.
Read the guideBuying by lifestyle
A home with an ADU on the San Diego coast.
What a permitted ADU adds to a coastal property, and what an unpermitted one costs at appraisal.
Preview length. The published guide runs 1,200 to 1,800 words.
$750M+
career sales
15
waterfront closings
$47M
record La Jolla sale represented
Top 1,000
WSJ RealTrends teams 2020–2025
What does a permitted ADU add?
A second address on one parcel. A place for a parent, an adult child, a caretaker, or a tenant. Where the permit is clean and the rules allow it, income as well.
Appraisers count paper. A permitted unit with a final sign-off is square footage and sometimes a rent schedule. Casita is a word.
What does an unpermitted unit cost?
At appraisal, at the lender, and again on the day you sell. Value it at zero until the paperwork exists [VERIFY current ADU and appraisal practice].
We are not telling you to walk. We are telling you not to pay twice, once in the price for income you cannot document and once in the cost of legalizing it.
How should an ADU enter the search?
As documented upside, or not at all. If the permit exists we underwrite it. If it does not, it comes out of the offer math and stays out.
That discipline matters most in a competitive week, when the story about the guest house is doing more work than the file behind it.
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LuxurySoCalRealty | Compass
Counsel from the desk behind $750M+ of this coastline
Fifteen waterfront closings. The buyer's side of the $47M La Jolla record at 6026 Camino De La Costa. The rest of it is on the channel, in full, with nothing cut.
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