Condo Conversions in Santa Rosa, CA

Santa Rosa treats conversions as subdivisions under the Map Act, requiring a tentative subdivision map, or a parcel map for proposals of fewer than five units, and it layers a local ordinance on top. The city's Condominium Conversion Ordinance, Ordinance No. 1991, applies to buildings built or issued permits to build prior to April 1979, and conversions under it are allowed by conditional use permit only when the rental vacancy rate is at three percent or above. The use permit application itself is heavily drawing-driven: plans to scale showing a site plan with buildings, parking, circulation, open space and patios, floor plans for each unit type, fully dimensioned elevation plans, driveways, pedestrian ways, curb cuts and storage areas, exterior walls and fences, and the location, type and size of all drainage pipes and structures and of all on-site and adjacent overhead and underground utility lines.

Nearly all of that is measurable in a single scanning visit, and most of it is wrong in the file drawings. Santa Rosa's conversion candidates are by definition older buildings, and a 1960s or 1970s apartment complex has been re-roofed, re-plumbed, and re-parked several times since it was drawn. Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner captures the site and the buildings at millions of points, so unit floor plans, ceiling heights, exterior elevations, parking stall counts and dimensions, utility risers, and drainage structures all come out of one measured dataset. That same data produces the condominium plan, where unit boundaries are defined against real floors, ceilings, and wall faces rather than against drawings nobody has checked.

Note that the ordinance work runs alongside a separate physical track: a city building inspection for substandard conditions before final map recordation, and a building elements report by a registered civil or structural engineer, licensed contractor, or licensed architect. Maps record with the Sonoma County Clerk-Recorder in Santa Rosa. See our Santa Rosa as-built surveys for the building documentation.