Builder Dave Potter shares two ADU projects. In Lynn, a walkout basement became a 400 sq ft studio with kitchen and bath; piping was moved, drainage checked, and daylight added with windows and a sun tube. Cost was about $80K, with an estimated $350K value boost; the owners used it for their college-aged son. In Salem, an accessible basement unit for an adult daughter added 36-inch doors, grab bars, and new windows. A failing wood-over-dirt floor and carpenter ants required removal, extermination, and a new slab. Cost roughly $100K then, adding about $200–300K in value.

John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher. I’m here today with Dave Potter. Dave has been a licensed builder and real estate developer since 1980 and he’s completed hundreds of projects in his career. Dave is now specializing in accessory dwelling units or ADU in Massachusetts, and we’re going to do a case study of a couple of his recent projects. Welcome Dave.

Dave Potter: How you doing, John?

ADU Project in Lynn, Massachusetts

Maher: Good, thanks Dave. One of the projects that we’re going to talk about is in Lynn, Massachusetts. Can you tell me a little bit about what the homeowner here was looking for?

Potter: Well, it was a walkout basement, and so it lended itself right to putting in an ADU, putting an in-law apartment down in the basement because it had a lot of daylight and it had a door that walked right outside to a nice patio. And those are the situations where you sit there and say, this is going to be very, very economical to do so. Ended up being like a studio style with a kitchen and a bathroom no more than 400 square feet. So, it was really inexpensive to do and we ended up, it came out really nice. We had the headroom, we had to move some piping. When you do something in the basement like that, you usually have to move piping and vents and the heater has to be moved. That’s less money to do all of that than it is to build new.

Because as long as you have a relatively dry basement that is the most economical way in New England to add an ADU in everybody that sits there in their basement, they’re not using it. If it’s a walkout basement, even if it’s not, you can actually make it into a walkout basement by adding a dog house in the back. That is what I say that that’s just an addition in the back that has a door, and then there’s stairs that go down to the basement and you turn that into a nice well lit ADU or a nice well lit apartment and you can do a lot of things to bring a natural light there. You can add windows, you can actually put, what I’ve done is I put these things, sunlight, what it is, it’s a tube light, sun tube that goes all the way up to the roof, cuts through closets in the main house and opens up into the basement. And now you bring a natural daylight into the middle of the basement. It is actually phenomenal. These things, relatively inexpensive and easy to put it.

Challenges with this ADU Project?

Maher: What are some of the challenges that you faced with this particular project in Lynn and how are they solved?

Potter: Well, one of the challenges was making sure that there was no water coming in. And that’s one of the things when you run into the basement units, is the water going to come in. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that the grading goes away from the house. You want to make sure that the gutters come down and they’re actually, all that water is taken away from the house. You want to make sure that there’s no big cracks in the foundation, cracks in the floor, make sure that your floor is above the water level, the groundwater level, and all of that. And once we did all that, we were able to do that and the basement was always dry according to the homeowners. There was no sump pump. I didn’t see anything there. But we still double checked because I’ve seen it before where water comes in all of a sudden no water for 20 years and all of a sudden you get water.

Difference Between an ADU and a Finished Basement

Maher: Right, one good storm or something like that. Right. What would you say for customers saying, well, what’s the difference between an ADU in the basement and a finished basement? What are some of the design differences?

Potter: Well, you have to have a separate entrance for an ADU finished basement, you can just have an entrance coming through the main house. You still have to have some way to have egress if you’re going to have a bedroom down there. But that can be a window or something like that. But an ADU, an accessory dwelling unit, an additional apartment has to have its own separate entrance coming in and coming out. You also have egress laws. You also have to end up with a kitchen and it has to be its own separate living space, which means a kitchen, which means a bathroom, which means everything’s separate from the existing structure.

Do You Remove Basement Stairs for an ADU?

Maher: Do you remove the basement stairs that would go from the main part of the house down to the basement typically? Do you remove those?

Potter: No, we would leave that. That would become, it is locked. Some towns would want some kind of emergency panic bar to go up there to, that’s all belong to the fire department. The fire department sit there and says, what happens if that other entrance is blocked? We want to have two egresses. And they end up with a panic bar or some kind of emergency system to go through the house in case there’s a fire.

Results of the ADU Project

Maher:  (04:26):

Okay. And what was the result of this project in Lynn? The final result?

Potter: It came out good. They really didn’t use it to rent it out, although they could have, they used it for their teenage son. Their teenage son was going into college and they wanted him to just feel like he was living on his own and it worked out well for them.

ROI On AN ADU

Maher: In terms of ROI, what was the cost of the project and then what was the increase in home value afterwards?

Potter: Yeah, we were able to do it for about $80,000, believe it or not, it was 400 square feet, $200 a square foot. It was almost very little to do as far as structure goes. We did a lot of moving around. We added our kitchen, we added a lot of stuff like that, but the actual cost of the structure was most minimal and I would guess that they increased the value of their house by maybe $350,000.

ADU Project In Salem

Maher: Okay. Alright. So moving on. You had another project in Salem. Tell me a little bit about what brought the people in Salem to you and what were they looking for?

Potter: Well, that one, it was a property I was developing to resell and somebody came in and said they were interested in buying it, but they had a daughter that wanted to have their own unit that was a little bit older and she had some kind of special needs, but she wanted to be in office. They wanted to keep her close. She wasn’t in a wheelchair, but they wanted to keep her close, but they wanted her to feel like she had her own thing.

So, we had a couple of things there that they wanted us to put some grab bars and some stuff like that just in case she got dizzy while she was in the bathroom and stuff like that. And we ended up with the 36 inch doors there just in case, just to give her more room to come in and out. And she had her own exit that was again, with a walkout basement, but we had to do a lot more work. I ended up putting extra windows in down there and a lot of other stuff. But the people loved it and the daughter was, in fact, she was in love with it. And that smile was just fantastic. When I saw that one, it was all done.

Challenges with the Salem ADU Project

Maher: That’s great. Any particular challenges with that property in terms of the buildout?

Potter: The basement was a rack. I mean there was a floor there, a wood floor that was over, like dirt and we had to rip all that out and oh my God, you run into these things a lot when you’re renovating something existing. But luckily I had the experience and the decades of experience of dealing with this. I was able to handle it right away and we were able to get it done. We knew exactly what to do right away.

Maher: What did you do to fix the floor?

Potter: Huh? We ripped it all out.

Maher: What did you do to fix it?

Potter: There was like co hands there and everything else like that. So we ended up, which happens, you have old floors sitting, have that in some of these basements and we just ripped it all out and we were able to exterminate the carpenter ants, they pour a new solid floor right over it and rebuilt on top of that.

ROI On the Salem Project

Maher: And then so you said that the homeowners were happy with that project and was there an ROI difference there in terms of what the project cost versus what the house was worth afterwards?

Potter: This is many years ago, so it was a difference between, the cost was probably about a hundred thousand dollars back then and they probably increased the value of two or 300,000 at the time. I mean now it’s probably worth a lot more because it was a really nice project.

Maher: Alright, well that’s really great information Dave. Thanks again for speaking with me today.

Potter:

Thank you John.

Maher: And for more information about Dave and ADU projects in Massachusetts, visit DavePottera d.com or call six six build ADU. That’s 662-845-3238.