Bottom Line Up Front
Six things to know before reading the rest of the page.
Independent
We work on the build side: no extra cost to you — same price as going direct. Payments release only when inspections pass.
No extra cost to you
Never a percentage of construction cost. A percentage would reward inflating the build budget. That is off the table by design.
Six verification sources
We verify contractors against six independent data sources, including 11 million inspection records from our sister brand InspectPilot.
Verified Milestone Payouts
Money moves only after each construction milestone passes independent inspection. ADUscale never custodies funds.
We don't build
We don't pour concrete. We don't frame walls. We don't draw plans. We protect the homeowner inside the work that other licensed professionals do.
Sometimes “don't build”
When the analysis points there, we say so at the Reality Check stage — before any commitment. About one in five Feasibility reports recommend wait or don't proceed.
Who we are, in one paragraph
ADUscale is California's build-side ADU partner: 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. We are not a contractor, a design-build firm, a prefab vendor, a marketplace, a lender, or a real estate brokerage. We are on the build side through a process that has too many moving parts and too few people whose only job is to look out for the person paying the bill.
Why the role exists
California issued over 25,000 ADU permits in 2022, a 46× increase from 540 in 2016. ADUs were 19% of all California housing produced that year. Los Angeles alone went from 80 ADU permits in 2016 to 7,160 in 2022.
That growth was not accompanied by the protection structures that govern commercial construction. The result, in 2024–2025, was a documented pattern of contractor failures that left hundreds of California homeowners with half-finished projects:
Anchored Tiny Homes · Roseville, CA
Shut down July 2024, abandoning 450+ ADU projects before filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy with $12.8 million in liabilities. CSLB revoked all licenses by December 2024.
Multitaskr Construction · Chula Vista, CA · CSLB License #1074209
Closed fall 2024 after collecting an estimated $15–48 million from 100+ Southern California homeowners. CSLB Accusation N2024-235 was filed April 2025; license revoked June 2025; four officers banned from contracting for five years.
ADUscale exists because the protection that surrounds a $50M school-district build has not existed for a $300K ADU. Until now.
The Four-Stage Method
We work in four stages. Hire us for one stage, or for all four. Each stage is independently sellable. Many homeowners hire us only for Decide. Some bring us in mid-project, after a contractor has failed.
Decide
We determine whether an ADU makes sense at all on a specific lot. The free Reality Check takes two minutes. The $199 Feasibility & Risk Assessment is a 12–20 page written report — lot analysis, ADU type recommendation, detailed cost model, financing-path recommendation, contractor-market read, written risk register, and recommended next steps. The $199 credits in full against the full ADUscale engagement.
Verify
We validate every contractor bid through six independent data sources before a name reaches the homeowner. The six: [1] CSLB license + five-year tenure, [2] CSLB disciplinary history, [3] California Superior Court filings, [4] local building department inspection records, [5] the InspectPilot 11-million-record inspection database, and [6] independent insurance and bond verification with the carriers. A contractor failing any one of eight disqualifying screens does not enter the bid pool.
Protect
Verified Milestone Payouts release funds only after a LADBS-recorded inspection passes and our independent on-site verification confirms the work. Homeowners choose the rail. The Stripe Connect rail (default, included) is held by Stripe under its money-transmitter framework — not regulated escrow. The Licensed Escrow Partner rail (optional, partner fee 0.5–1.0%) is held by a third-party DFPI-licensed escrow agent under California Financial Code §17000 et seq. ADUscale never custodies funds.
Build
If and only if it makes sense. We coordinate with the homeowner's contractor, lender, building department, and inspectors. Single point of contact. We catch the predictable change-order surprises before they appear: $15K–$30K sewer-lateral upgrades, $20K–$60K hillside soils work, $5K–$25K structural retrofits on pre-1970 garages.
Pricing — four tiers, no extra cost to you
Reality Check
Two-minute lot eligibility tool
Feasibility & Risk Assessment
12–20 page written report
Verify-only
Six-source verification on bids you've already collected
Full ADUscale engagement
The complete Decide → Verify → Protect → Build method
2 minutes. No email required. No contractor introduction.
Or skip to the $199 Feasibility & Risk Assessment.
The Seven Structural Commitments
These are not slogans. They are the structural reasons our incentives line up with the homeowner.
We get paid the same whether your project is $200K or $400K. That is by design.
What ADUscale is not
This list is as important as the one above. It tells the homeowner what we will and will not do.
We do not provide legal, financial, or construction advice in the licensed sense. We provide decision support, feasibility intelligence, contractor verification, and milestone-anchored payment protection — the work of a build-side ADU partner.
Where we work
Year 1 — today
California, with Los Angeles County as the primary market. Active coverage of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Orange County. The Feasibility & Risk Assessment is available statewide.
Year 2 — planned
Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Colorado. Massachusetts is the highest-priority Year-2 market — the Affordable Homes Act of 2024 (signed August 6, 2024, effective February 2, 2025) made ADUs by-right statewide on single-family residential lots up to 900 sqft.
Who built ADUscale and why
Yaro Korets, Founder
ADUscale · California
Yaro Korets built ADUscale after watching the same pattern repeat across California residential projects: homeowners signing six-figure contracts with no independent advisor in the room, then absorbing the cost when the contractor underbid, walked off, or lost a license mid-build. Anchored Tiny Homes. Multitaskr. Plus smaller failures that never made the news.
The verification side of ADUscale rests on the data foundation built at our sister brand InspectPilot, which holds 11 million construction inspection records dating to 2013. That data lets us score a contractor's real inspection pass-rate before a bid enters your pool. The build-side structure rests on a simple choice: we help the homeowner secure the right contractor and protect the budget with inspection-gated milestone payments — at the same price as going direct.
ADUscale is California-based and operates statewide.