Condo Conversions in Moraga, CA

Moraga is a town of ranch-style subdivisions from the 1960s and 70s with semi-rural, open-space edges, so we won’t pretend there is a steady pipeline of condominium conversions here — the realistic work is occasional: a duplex or small multi-unit building being converted for separate sale, mapping support for the town’s existing attached-home communities, and new-construction condominium mapping when town-center projects come forward. Every one of these runs on the same two legal instruments. The Subdivision Map Act governs the map that subdivides the property, processed through the Town of Moraga and reviewed by the Contra Costa County surveyor before recording with the county recorder in Martinez. The Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act governs the condominium plan — the recorded document that defines each unit as a three-dimensional envelope, distinguishes common area from exclusive-use common area, and becomes the geometric backbone of the CC&Rs.

Moraga’s ground gives that work a local edge. The town sits on Moraga Formation volcanics over Orinda Formation sediments, and Moraga is known for landslide activity on its developed slopes — which means buildings, retaining walls, and pavements on hillside sites move measurably over the decades. When a condominium plan describes units inside an existing structure, we want the wall planes and floor elevations as they exist today, not as drawn in the 1970s. Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner records the entire building — interior and exterior — in a single visit, producing millions of survey-grade points we translate directly into plan diagrams and CAD deliverables, with no return trips for missed dimensions.

We also resolve the underlying boundary and any easements before the airspace geometry is drawn, since Moraga’s open-space boundaries and older subdivision perimeters can hold surprises. Where a project needs slope context for planning or geotechnical review, we pair the condo work with a topographic survey from the same scan data.