No, of course I didn’t ACTUALLY look into it. That was just me being snarky.

I did look, very briefly, into using shipping containers for a pool house, though. It is doable, but the structural engineer said it won’t really save you money because if you cut them, you have to re-engineer everything.

Permitting in Clairemont shouldn’t be too bad. I would recommend doing what we did and submit a Preliminary Design Review to the city DURING escrow. This is a process by which you ask the city specific questions about building a loosely defined house on a specific property.

We checked up on all the overlays that apply to this particular property and any specific rules so you know, before you close escrow, what you are dealing with.

We learned, for example, that the property was not in the coastal commission overlay. If it had been, we would not have purchased it.

The prelim. design review cost about $4K but it paved the way for a little easier permitting, and let us know what to expect. We also requested exemptions that we were able to use when it came to permitting time.

In Clairemont, you will run into “steep hillside” overlyas, but you can get exemptions by pulling up old grading maps that show the slope is not natural.

I would say the permitting process is not so bad. Again – patience is the key and playing the “I’m just a homeowner” card goes a long way. Finding an architect that is both creative and knows how to negotiate the permitting process is probably the biggest challenge.

And budgeting the city fees is impossible.

Tell your girlfriend “In a year, you will wish you started today.” As much time and hassle as I have put into this house, I am so thrilled that I started it when I did.

We pulled a permit in 2 yrs in CV and we used an architect that was more commercial than residential for personal reasons. We could have done it in about 6 months w/ a residential architect.