This story by Ben Abramson appeared on StrongTowns.org on July 26, 2024.
From a regulatory standpoint, it’s gotten much easier to build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) across North America. A slew of states, provinces and cities have enabled the construction of detached cottages and residential units added onto existing homes, a move that lets owners use their properties more flexibly and helps add housing supply at the more affordable end of the market.
But, on the consumer side, a maze of zoning laws and design decisions can make building an additional unit a daunting proposal. A new website, Resimate, seeks to provide a one-stop shop for the ADU-curious. Property owners in several Canadian cities can enter an address and get an instant analysis of their tract, including whether local regulations allow additional units and, if so, how one could be situated on their lot.
Resimate founder Sarah Cipkar (who previously appeared on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast) faced this question firsthand when she wanted to build a backyard cottage on her property in Hamilton, Ontario. It would become the first one in the city, and she says her challenges and successes inspired her to make it easier for others to follow the same path. Cipkar calls expanding such construction “the most realistic policy intervention that can be achieved on a massive scale within municipalities,” and says it’s enabled by the broad level of acceptance for backyard cottages compared to other housing types.
Starting with funding from the Canadian government, Cipkar developed a geospatial data tool that analyzes lots. She also launched ADUsearch.ca/, which offers a summary of local ADU ordinances and an address search that checks an individual property for physical and legal compatibility. For Resimate, that data is combined with listings from builders, allowing homeowners to directly connect to vendors who could deliver a finished solution to their backyard.
Just as consumers struggle to find information, builders of backyard homes have challenges connecting with customers. Resimate integrates existing designs from builders and uses a visualization tool to let owners see how each model might work in their setting. This gives opportunities to “builders who don’t necessarily have the capacity and time and investment to be like front-end sales all over the country,” says Cipkar. The site’s revenue will come from commissions from those connections with customers.
Cipkar is optimistic about modular construction and says several models of backyard homes can be delivered pre-assembled to your lot. She also points out that many high-dollar condos are smaller than backyard homes, and no one thinks they’re unique or exotic.
About that nomenclature: Cipkar calls these dwellings backyard homes, saying that the term ADU is “planner-speak that people kind of tune out.” Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn takes that sentiment further: “An ADU sounds like a disease you catch or an acronym for something evil. And these are just like normal places that people build all the time.”
Marohn’s spot review of Resimate concluded that “this site is awesome” for how it helps demystify the process. “I talk about this in my “Escaping the Housing Trap” talk, that these should become something that people can do as an impulse buy.” He compares it to car shopping, where “you’re gonna give me different styles and models I can choose from.”
Then, once you’re ready to commit, the housing industry must find an easier, more predictable way to deliver the end product, just as the automotive industry does.
Cipkar says that modular builders, plus a change in consumer mindset, could make that possible. She hopes that more people will “start thinking about housing, construction and development as more of an on-demand (product), kind of like an IKEA, and it’s ready for me in X number of weeks.”
She says advocates for backyard cottages can play a role in increasing demand and acceptance. Just a few years after building the first one in Windsor, Cipkar led a bike tour of 10 other units that had been built. Forty riders joined the bike tour, and homeowners welcomed them with tours of their properties. Events like these help people envision what may be possible in their neighborhoods and help grow the snowball, Cipkar says.
“Where the rubber meets the road is the average homeowner realizing that they can add a unit or two, that it can meet their social, familial and maybe even financial needs,” while collectively helping with “one prong of addressing some of the housing issues that we have.”