Can you build an ADU in Lake Balboa or Valley Village?

How big are house lots in Lake Balboa and Valley Village?

Big enough for a backyard house on most of them. We counted every City of Los Angeles single-family parcel on the LA County Assessor's parcel map whose center falls inside each neighborhood council boundary ¹:

• Lake Balboa: 6,564 house lots, median 6,470 sq ft, half of them between 6,002 and 7,511 sq ft. About 7 percent are 10,000 sq ft or more.
• Valley Village: 2,668 house lots, median 7,578 sq ft, half between 6,749 and 8,401 sq ft. About 12 percent are 10,000 sq ft or more.

If you go by ZIP code instead, 91607 has 3,665 house lots with a median of 7,501 sq ft ¹. Lake Balboa shares 91406 with Van Nuys; ZIP-wide numbers for 91406 are in our Van Nuys guide.

The state does not let cities set a minimum lot size for an ADU ⁵, so lot size is about where a unit fits, not whether it is allowed. The houses are old: the median house was built in 1950 in Lake Balboa and 1945 in Valley Village, and 90 and 83 percent were built before 1960 ¹. For what fits on a lot this size, see ADU types on a 6,600 sq ft lot.

Are my neighbors actually getting ADU permits?

Yes, and Lake Balboa is one of the busier parts of the Valley. LADBS tags each permit with a neighborhood council, so we counted ADU and JADU building permits by council and year ³:

• Lake Balboa: 115 in 2023, 118 in 2024, 152 in 2025, and 92 from January 1 through October 3, 2026, on pace for about 120 this year.
• Valley Village: 37 in 2023, 50 in 2024, 39 in 2025, and 32 through October 3, 2026, on pace for about 42.

In 2025 that works out to about 23 permits per 1,000 house lots in Lake Balboa and about 15 in Valley Village ¹³. Almost all of them were on lots with one or two homes: 242 of 244 Lake Balboa permits since January 2025, and 67 of 71 in Valley Village ³. In Lake Balboa, 120 of those 244 were filed as alterations to an existing building, 56 as additions and 68 as new buildings ³.

One caution on ZIP codes: 91607 is not all Valley Village. Of the 102 ADU permits LADBS issued in 91607 since January 2025, 53 were in the Valley Village council area and 39 in Greater Valley Glen ³. Counts are permits, not homes. Our ZIP-by-ZIP permit count compares the whole Valley.

Does the Valley Village Specific Plan stop me from adding an ADU?

No. The plan was written to manage apartment and commercial building next to single-family streets, and state law says an ADU that meets state rules does not count against a lot's allowed density ⁶⁹. It still applies to your project, so it is worth knowing what it says.

The plan covers the area bounded by Burbank Boulevard, the Hollywood Freeway (I-170), the Ventura Freeway (I-101) and the Tujunga Wash ⁶. Inside it, any work that adds a dwelling unit or floor area counts as a "Project" under the plan ⁷. For a house lot, the rules that matter are:

• Height. No one-family building may exceed 30 feet ⁸. The city measures ADU height under whatever specific plan governs the lot ¹⁰, but a state ADU is capped at 16, 18 or 20 feet ⁴, well under that line.
• Lighting. Outdoor lighting must be low, shielded and aimed onto your own property ¹⁹.
• Street dedication. Lots zoned RW1 or more restrictive on a local street are exempt from the plan's street-widening rule ²⁰.

The plan's line that one-family lots "shall be maintained with one-family dwellings" ²¹ does not block an ADU: the state requires cities to allow ADUs on lots zoned for single-family homes ¹¹. City Planning takes questions about the plan by email ²². If your lot already has apartments, the multifamily ADU rules in our Van Nuys guide apply here too.

My Lake Balboa zoning says RIO. What does that mean for an ADU?

RIO is the River Improvement Overlay, and it adds a few landscaping and lighting rules near the Los Angeles River and its tributaries ¹². It does not stop an ADU: 53 of the 244 ADU permits issued in Lake Balboa since January 2025 were on lots whose zoning includes RIO ³.

Under the overlay, a "Project" includes building, adding to or structurally altering the outside of any building ¹². The rules you are most likely to meet are:

1. Planting. 75 percent of any newly landscaped area must use native, WatershedWise or River Master Plan plants. Existing landscaping is not affected ¹³.
2. Lighting. Site and building lights have brightness and shielding limits ¹³.
3. Lots on the river. If your property line abuts the river or a river frontage road, the lot is in the Inner Core, and new buildings are not allowed within a 10-foot landscape buffer along that line ¹⁴.

A state ADU of up to 800 sq ft does not have to meet lot coverage, front setback or design standards ¹⁵, so ask at plan check which RIO rules the city will apply to yours. Your zone string on ZIMAS shows whether RIO is there ².

Is Lake Balboa in a flood zone because of the Sepulveda Basin?

Almost no Lake Balboa house is. We checked every single-family lot inside the neighborhood council boundary against FEMA's current flood map: the center of 3 of 6,564 lots falls in a high-risk flood zone, and 1 more in a moderate-risk zone ¹⁶.

FEMA does map high-risk zones near the neighborhood, including inside the river channel, but Lake Balboa's house lots sit almost entirely outside them ¹⁶. Check your own address on the FEMA map anyway, because a parcel near the edge can be partly inside a zone that its center misses.

The airport is the other thing people ask about. Van Nuys Airport has its own height rules, but they do not stop a building of 45 feet or less ¹⁸; our Van Nuys guide has the details.

What should I check first, and in what order?

Start with the free lookups and work toward the costly ones.

1. ZIMAS: your zone (look for RIO), whether you are inside the Valley Village Specific Plan, and the permit history of the house and garage ².
2. What is on the lot: one house, a front and back house, or an attached duplex or apartment building, because each follows different ADU rules. The Van Nuys guide covers each case.
3. The garage: whether it was permitted, if you want to convert it. See how to check a garage permit.
4. Sewer, power and water: on houses built around 1950, check the lateral, the panel and the meter early. See the 200-foot sewer rule and the LADWP water meter.
5. Setbacks and parking: see ADU setbacks and ADU parking in LA.

This is the kind of thing a lot check settles in one pass, before you pay for plans. If you are south of the 101, see our guides to Sherman Oaks and Studio City.

Quick answers

Sources

1. LA County Assessor parcel layer (LACounty_Parcel), City of Los Angeles single-family parcels inside the Lake Balboa and Valley Village neighborhood council boundaries and in ZIP 91607, LA County Assessor / EmpowerLA Neighborhood Council Boundaries 2018 layer (Greenlight analysis). Facts checked 2026-10-12
2. Zoning Search (ZIMAS), Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12
3. Building Permits Issued from 2020 to Present (N), dataset pi9x-tg5x, by neighborhood council (cnc) and ZIP 91607, LADBS via City of Los Angeles Open Data (Greenlight query). Facts checked 2026-10-12
4. Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook (March 2026), 66323 Units: Single-Family Detached ADUs, California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Facts checked 2026-10-12
5. Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook (March 2026), Lot size, California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Facts checked 2026-10-12
6. Valley Village Specific Plan (Ordinance No. 168,613), Section 1 and purposes, Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12
7. Valley Village Specific Plan, Section 4 Definitions: Project, Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12
8. Valley Village Specific Plan, Section 6.B Building Height, Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12
9. Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook (March 2026), Lot density, California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Facts checked 2026-10-12
10. ZA Memo No. 143 Revision 1, Accessory Dwelling Units (August 2025), Q.5, Los Angeles City Planning, Office of Zoning Administration. Facts checked 2026-10-12
11. Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook (March 2026), ADUs on single-family and multifamily lots, California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Facts checked 2026-10-12
12. LAMC Sec. 13.17 RIO River Improvement Overlay District, A. Purpose and C. Definitions (text as of 2026-10-05), Los Angeles Municipal Code, reproduced by GoCodebook. Facts checked 2026-10-12
13. LAMC Sec. 13.17 F. Development Regulations: landscaping and exterior site lighting, Los Angeles Municipal Code, reproduced by GoCodebook. Facts checked 2026-10-12
14. LAMC Sec. 13.17 C. Definitions and Inner Core regulations, Los Angeles Municipal Code, reproduced by GoCodebook. Facts checked 2026-10-12
15. Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook (March 2026), 66323 Units, California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Facts checked 2026-10-12
16. National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL), Flood Hazard Zones layer 28, intersected with Lake Balboa single-family parcels, FEMA (Greenlight analysis). Facts checked 2026-10-12
17. Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook (March 2026), Summary of Recent Changes, California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Facts checked 2026-10-12
18. LAMC Sec. 12.50 Airport Approach Zoning Regulations, Subsection H. Exception, Los Angeles Municipal Code, reproduced by GoCodebook. Facts checked 2026-10-12
19. Valley Village Specific Plan, Section 6.A.2 Lighting, Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12
20. Valley Village Specific Plan, Section 10 Public Right-of-Way, Dedications and Roadway Improvements, Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12
21. Valley Village Specific Plan, Section 5.A Residential Land Uses, Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12
22. Valley Village Specific Plan (program page), Los Angeles City Planning. Facts checked 2026-10-12

Greenlight is not a contractor, architect or engineer, and this is not legal advice. Rules change; every fact here shows the date we last checked it.