South Bay apartment building, two-story stucco

Your building is worth more than the record shows.

We can help you capture the value.

Unit Legalization General Contracting
What we do

South Bay Building Advisors is a general contracting and advisory firm in the South Bay. We are apartment building specialists, with expertise in legalizing non-conforming units.

Apartment building carport and breezeway

Unit Legalization

California law changed in 2024. If your apartment building has a non-conforming unit that was converted from a garage, basement or storage room before 2020, you can permit it with no penalty. We handle the whole process for a flat fee.

How it works →
South Bay apartment building street frontage

General Contracting

Renovation, repositioning, unit turns, structural and code work on apartment buildings across the South Bay. Licensed, bonded and insured, and used to working with tenants in place.

What we build →

The law changed quietly.

To help address California's Housing Crisis, your city is now required to permit that converted unit you've always had. They cannot charge impact fees and cannot penalize you for it.

The new law unlocks value for apartment owners.

A unit that isn't on the record can't be insured properly and, more importantly, can't be financed — which hurts your loan proceeds as well as value upon a sale. Legalizing a unit can add $200,000 to $500,000 to a building's financeable value.
See how it works
Our fee
$25,000Flat, per unit. Published, because nobody else will and we know we can deliver.
To start
$100A written Unit Report. Credited against the fee.
Impact fees
$0The statute prohibits them entirely.
Work crew
Yours or oursAny work the city requires, you can hire whoever you like.