I started ADUscale because California homeowners kept ending up on the wrong side of the scale. A homeowner signs a six-figure contract, hands over a deposit, and discovers two months in — or never — that the only party in the room without a build-side partner was them. ADUscale is on the build side: we help homeowners secure one of the state's top contractors, expand that contractor's capacity to take the project, and protect the budget with inspection-gated milestone payments — at the same price as going direct.
I spent years close to California residential construction, watching the same failure pattern repeat. A contractor wins the bid by underpricing the job, collects deposits across dozens of homeowners, then the math catches up and the company collapses. Anchored Tiny Homes did this in Roseville in July 2024: over 450 ADU projects abandoned, $12.8 million in liabilities, Chapter 7 bankruptcy, all CSLB licenses revoked by December. Multitaskr Construction in Chula Vista did the same thing on a different scale: CSLB filed Accusation N2024-235, the license was revoked in June 2025, and four officers were banned from contracting for five years.
In every one of those cases, the homeowner had everybody except an advisor on their side. They had a contractor (paid to build), an architect (paid per drawing), a lender (paid on the loan), and a permit expediter (paid per submittal). Nobody was paid to tell them “don't sign this.” I knew the homeowner needed someone on their side of the scale, and that the model only works if that person takes nothing from anyone else in the project.
The other half of ADUscale is a data set. I founded InspectPilot in 2013 to track residential construction inspection outcomes across California jurisdictions. Today it holds 11 million inspection records — pass, fail, correction, re-inspection — tied to contractors, addresses, and permit numbers.
That data set is the foundation for the six-source contractor verification ADUscale runs on every bid: a contractor's real inspection pass-rate, scored from public record, before their name ever reaches a homeowner.
These are not marketing qualifications. They are structural constraints built into how ADUscale operates and gets paid.
The fastest way is the free Reality Check. It takes two minutes, returns a real signal on whether your lot is buildable under current California rules, and costs nothing. If you want to talk before that, the pricing page shows what an engagement actually costs, and the $199 Feasibility & Risk Assessment is the next step after the Reality Check.
Run a free Reality Check on your lot.
Founder, ADUscale. Founder, InspectPilot. California-based. ADUscale is a build-side ADU partner — same price as going direct, inspection-gated payments.
Last updated: June 2026.
If it points to “don't build,” you'll have saved the cost of a full feasibility study. If it points to “buildable,” the $199 Feasibility & Risk Assessment is the next step — and credits in full against a full Owner's Rep engagement.
