ADU Surveys in San Leandro, CA

San Leandro's ADU submittal guidelines put two survey-adjacent requirements in writing. First, every plan set's cover sheet must state the parcel's zone designations — zoning, liquefaction, flood, sanitary, and school district — which means knowing early whether your lot sits in a mapped hazard zone. Second, and more concretely: parcels in the 100-year floodplain must conform to the municipal code's floodplain mitigation requirements, demonstrated with an elevation certificate — a FEMA document that only comes from surveyed elevations. San Leandro's creek corridors and low-lying western neighborhoods put a meaningful share of the city's ADU-friendly backyards inside that floodplain, and new detached structures in liquefaction or landslide zones add a soils report to the list.

The rest of the picture is standard but real: site, existing, demolition, and proposed plans drawn to scale, lot coverage and floor-area numbers that depend on accurate lot dimensions, and the state's 4-foot setbacks measured from legal lines that San Leandro's postwar fences track only approximately. The city's housing stock — compact ranch and bungalow lots platted in the 1940s and 50s — leaves most detached ADUs designed tight to the rear corner, exactly where accumulated fence drift matters most. Our laser-scanned site survey establishes the boundary, captures structures, hardscape, and drainage-relevant elevations in one visit, and produces the base map your designer needs plus the elevation certificate if your parcel is flood-mapped.

San Leandro runs a pre-reviewed ADU plan program that shortens design timelines — but pre-reviewed plans still need site-specific siting, and that is survey work. Deliverables are a stamped base map, staked corners, layered DWG, and FEMA elevation certificates where required, with records through the Alameda County Recorder. For terrain-driven parcels along the eastern hills, see our San Leandro topographic surveys.