Condo Conversions in Richmond, CA

Richmond’s scale and history give it a broader range of conversion candidates than most of its neighbors: early-1900s buildings in the Point Richmond hills, multi-unit housing dating to the WWII shipyard boom, and large redevelopment parcels near the waterfront where existing buildings are repositioned rather than demolished. Whatever the building, the legal structure is the same — a subdivision map under the Subdivision Map Act (parcel map up to four units, tract map for five or more) and a condominium plan under the Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act defining units, common area, and exclusive-use areas. Richmond is in Contra Costa County, so the map goes through the Contra Costa County Surveyor’s office for review and records, with the condominium plan, at the Contra Costa County Recorder in Martinez.

Two Richmond-specific realities shape the work. First, wartime-era buildings were built fast, and eighty years later their as-built condition can diverge sharply from any drawing that survives; unit boundaries in the condominium plan have to come from measurement, not archives. Second, on the shoreline’s mapped liquefaction zones, long-term settlement makes floors and openings irregular in ways owners have stopped noticing but a recorded plan cannot ignore. Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner addresses both in a single visit per building — every unit, corridor, and the exterior captured as millions of survey-grade points, from which we draft unit boundaries that match the building as it stands. For larger repositioning projects, the same point cloud feeds architectural and structural work; see 3D laser scanning.

On Point Richmond’s steep, irregular hillside lots, the underlying boundary survey demands the same care as the building measurement, and we preserve controlling monuments per Business and Professions Code §8771 before the map records. Step one, as everywhere in the East Bay, is local: Richmond regulates conversion of existing units under its own rules, and confirming the current ordinance with the city comes before any mapping spend.