How much rent can an ADU earn in the San Fernando Valley?

The most honest public benchmark is HUD's Small Area Fair Market Rents, published for every ZIP code. Across the Valley cities we track, the median works out to roughly $1,960 a month for a studio, $2,190 for a one-bedroom, and $2,730 for a two-bedroom. Those are planning numbers, not promises; market asking rents for a brand-new unit often run higher.

Location moves the number more than finishes do. The same one-bedroom pencils out around $1,960 in North Hills and around $2,710 in Encino. Before you assume your block earns the Valley median, look up your own city; the spread between neighborhoods is over $700 a month for identical bedroom counts.

The payback math is simple enough to do in your head. A $180,000 garage conversion renting at $2,190 grosses about $26,000 a year, which is roughly seven years of gross rent to recoup the build. Gross is the operative word: financing costs, vacancy, insurance, and the property-tax increase on the new construction all come out of that number. The point of the estimate isn't precision; it's knowing whether the project is a seven-year story or a twenty-year story before you spend on plans.

One planning note landlords learn late: bedroom count drives rent more efficiently than square footage. The jump from studio to one-bedroom adds more rent than most finish upgrades, and the one-bedroom-to-two jump is bigger still. If rental income is the goal, that's usually where the design conversation should start.

The free ADU budget on this site pairs your build estimate with the HUD rent for your city and bedroom count, and shows the payback arithmetic with the assumptions labeled. Two minutes, no phone number.