Building A-du · The Census Bulletin
The Census Bulletin No. 2: Mid-City converts garages while the Valley builds new
Chris Koss, AIA|Published August 3, 2026
Spotlight No. 005 leaves the San Fernando Valley for the first time. In Mid-City, half of all ADU permits are garage conversions, against 40 percent citywide.
The Backyard Census is A-du's monthly count of Los Angeles ADU permits, pulled from the city's own public records. Every number below comes from a dated snapshot of LADBS permit data on the LA City Open Data portal (dataset pi9x-tg5x), pulled August 2, 2026, with permits current through July 25, 2026.
The first four spotlights all landed in the San Fernando Valley, because the Valley holds the top four spots on the board. This month the count moves south, and the picture changes.
Spotlight No. 005: Mid-City, ZIP 90019
826 ADU permits issued since 2020, No. 5 in the City of Los Angeles. That is the headline number, but the interesting part is what kind of ADUs they are.
Half of Mid-City's ADU permits are garage conversions: 50.0%, against 40.5% citywide. Detached new builds are the mirror image, 17.1% here versus 25.4% across the city. The homes are smaller too, a median of 616 square feet against 684 citywide.
That is what older, tighter blocks do. When the lot is narrow and the garage is already standing at the back of it, the cheapest path to another home is a kitchen, a bathroom, and a permit, not a foundation. (ADU types are classified from the text of the permit's work description, so treat the shares as close rather than exact.)
A different curve
Mid-City also peaked earlier than the Valley. Its biggest year was 2022 with 176 permits, and it has run below that since: 174 in 2023, 127 in 2024, 124 in 2025, and 72 so far in 2026. Compare that with Reseda or Granada Hills, both of which set their records in 2025. One neighborhood front-loaded its conversions; the others are still climbing.
The citywide count
Los Angeles has now issued 34,932 ADU building permits since 2020. 2022 and 2025 remain the two biggest years, at 6,051 and 6,399, and 2026 stands at 3,678 through late July.
Every neighborhood in the top 20 has its own page now, with the year-by-year trend, the build-type mix, and the size breakdown: browse the board.
Count your backyard in
If you own a home in LA, and especially if you own a detached garage you barely use, run a free test fit to see whether an ADU could fit behind your house. It is a quick estimate, and humans verify site conditions before anything gets built.
If your ADU is already on the census, it may already be on A-du: owners of newly permitted ADUs can claim their listing any time.
Methodology: ADU building permits issued by LADBS, City of Los Angeles, filtered to use class Accessory Dwelling Unit and building permits only (sub-permits excluded), January 2020 through the pull date. Counts are by ZIP, City of LA portion. Permits are not completed homes; some are never built. Full methodology and the raw data live in our public repository.