Condo Conversions in Berkeley, CA

Berkeley’s conversion candidates are its early-1900s housing stock: brown-shingle duplexes, stucco fourplexes near campus, and craftsman houses long since divided into flats. Converting one of these from a tenancy-in-common or a straight rental building into condominiums requires two recorded instruments — a subdivision map under the Subdivision Map Act and a condominium plan under the Davis-Stirling Act that defines each unit’s three-dimensional boundaries, the common area, and exclusive-use areas such as yards, decks, and parking. Berkeley is also a city with its own local rules on condominium conversion; these local programs have specific eligibility and tenant-protection provisions and are amended periodically, so verifying the current ordinance against your building is the first step in any conversion, before survey work begins.

Berkeley’s permitting culture rewards precision. The city routinely requires surveyor-stamped drawings, and its narrow lots mean the boundary component of a conversion matters as much as the building interior — a shared driveway or a fence a fraction of a foot off the line becomes a question the map must answer. Inside, hundred-year-old rooms are seldom square: walls lean, floors slope, and additions abound. We resolve both sides of the problem in one coordinated effort: a boundary survey of the lot, and a Trimble terrestrial laser scan of every unit, the common stairs, and the exterior envelope. The scan gives us millions of measured points in a single visit, so the condominium plan is drafted from the building’s true geometry rather than from tape measurements of walls that are not straight.

The map is reviewed by the city and the Alameda County Surveyor’s office, and both map and condominium plan record with the Alameda County Recorder. Where a conversion also raises lot-line or record-boundary questions, our boundary + topographic site plan surveys work folds directly into the same project.