ADU & Garage Conversion

It depends heavily on scope — a straightforward one-car conversion with no added plumbing costs meaningfully less than a two-car conversion with a full kitchenette and bathroom. Framing, insulation, HVAC, electrical, and permitting are baseline costs regardless; adding plumbing, upgrading to impact-rated windows and doors (required in Miami-Dade and Broward's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone), or choosing higher-end finishes all push the number up from there. We'll give you a real number after a walkthrough and zoning check, not a national-average ballpark that ignores South Florida labor and code requirements.

Yes, but the specifics depend heavily on your city or county. Florida law gives local governments the authority to allow ADUs in single-family zones, and Miami-Dade County has adopted its own detailed ordinance covering exactly this. Broward and Palm Beach are more of a patchwork — some cities have their own ADU rules, others handle it case by case, and state lawmakers have been pushing bills that would make ADU approval mandatory statewide, though none have made it all the way into law yet. We check your specific address's zoning before recommending anything, since "legal three blocks away" doesn't mean legal on your lot.

For a straightforward one- or two-car garage conversion, plan on roughly a few months of construction once permits are approved — and permitting itself can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months depending on the jurisdiction and whether plumbing is involved. Projects that add a full kitchen and bathroom, or that need structural work to the garage itself, run longer. We'll give you a realistic timeline specific to your scope and your city's permit review speed once we've seen the space.

Done properly and permitted, a garage conversion generally adds usable square footage and value — but it's not automatic, and it depends on your neighborhood. In areas where buyers expect covered parking, losing a garage can be a genuine drawback for some buyers even if the added living space is nicer than a garage was. We talk through this upfront, and in some cases design the conversion so it could reasonably be converted back later if that matters for resale in your specific market.

Converting a garage to living space is legally a "change of use," which means it needs a full building permit, not just a cosmetic-remodel permit, plus separate electrical and mechanical permits, and a plumbing permit if you're adding a kitchenette or bathroom. Skipping this isn't a shortcut — an unpermitted conversion shows up during a home sale, an insurance claim, or an appraisal, and can force you to legalize it after the fact at greater expense, or undo it. We handle the full permit package as part of the project.

In many cases, yes — that's actually one of the reasons local governments have been loosening ADU rules, since it adds rental housing without changing a neighborhood's character. But rules on minimum lease length (some jurisdictions bar short-term rentals but allow monthly or longer leases), owner-occupancy requirements, and how many units are allowed per lot vary by city and county. We confirm exactly what your jurisdiction allows before you count on rental income in your plans.

Usually yes, and it's easier if it's planned for from the start. We can frame and finish a conversion in a way that keeps the original garage door opening intact behind the new wall, or design the layout so reversing it isn't a full demolition. If resale flexibility matters to you — especially in a neighborhood where garage parking is a strong buyer expectation — tell us upfront and we'll build that into the design instead of treating it as an afterthought.

A regular remodel usually works with space that's already conditioned and code-compliant as living area. A garage conversion starts from a space built for a car — no vapor barrier under the slab, little to no insulation, no HVAC connection, and often a door and window setup that doesn't meet residential egress requirements. Converting it means solving all of that (insulation, moisture protection, HVAC, egress-compliant doors and windows, sometimes fire-rated separation) before you even get to the parts a normal remodel starts with, like layout and finishes. It's a different scope of work than it looks like from the outside. ---