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Published July 15, 2026
Beach city ADUs allow no short term rentals, require a recorded covenant, and most need a Coastal Development Permit decided within 60 days.
An ADU in Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach comes with three layers most inland South Bay owners never deal with: a recorded covenant locking in a 30 day minimum rental term, a Coastal Development Permit if the property sits in the Coastal Zone, and, in Manhattan Beach, a fee exemption for units under 750 square feet. Miss any one of the three and your project stalls or your rental use gets flagged.
State ADU law sets the floor. Cities can still add local design standards, and in the Coastal Zone, the California Coastal Act adds an entirely separate permit track on top of the ordinary building and zoning process. Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach both sit largely within the Coastal Zone, so an ADU project here is really two approvals running at once: the standard ADU permit under state and local zoning law, and a Coastal Development Permit under the Coastal Act.
Manhattan Beach Municipal Code section 10.74.050(A)(3)(a) requires a recorded covenant on the property addressing rental terms of 30 days or longer, prohibiting a separate sale of the ADU from the main home, and setting maintenance obligations. That covenant runs with the land, meaning it binds future owners too, not just the person who built the unit. The city's short term rental ordinance separately restricts rentals under 30 days to specific zones with a registration requirement, and most ADU zones in Manhattan Beach do not qualify, so in practice an ADU here is a long term rental unit by design. AB 1154, effective statewide January 1, 2026, reinforces this at the state level for JADUs specifically, banning short term rentals for junior units and requiring 30 day minimum terms.
Hermosa Beach follows the same basic logic under its own ADU chapter. The city repealed and replaced Hermosa Beach Municipal Code Chapter 17.21 through Ordinance No. 26-1498, adopted March 24, 2026 and effective April 23, 2026, to bring the local code current with the state law changes that took effect January 1, 2026. That ordinance sorts ADUs into two classes: Class 1 units follow the state exempt small ADU pathway under Government Code section 66323, and Class 2 units follow local design and size standards, capped at 850 square feet for a studio or one bedroom and 1,000 square feet for two or more bedrooms.
Under Government Code section 66311.5 (renumbered from section 66324 by SB 543, effective January 1, 2026), an ADU with 750 square feet or less of interior livable space is exempt from local impact fees statewide, including park, water, and sewer connection fees. School impact fees follow a tighter threshold: SB 543 exempts ADUs and JADUs with less than 500 square feet of interior livable space from school fees, and school districts can still charge them on larger units. Manhattan Beach codifies the state fee exemption in Municipal Code section 10.74.070(A). Building permit and plan check fees are separate charges and still apply regardless of size. If your unit runs larger than 750 square feet, expect impact fees charged in proportion to the ADU's size relative to the primary home, not the full per unit rate a new standalone house would pay.
If your lot sits in the Coastal Zone, which covers most of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, you need a Coastal Development Permit in addition to your building permit. Historically this was the single biggest source of delay in a beach city ADU project, with permits commonly taking five to eight months and an appeal to the California Coastal Commission capable of adding six months or more on top of that. AB 462, an urgency statute effective October 15, 2025, changed the math. It requires the local agency or the Coastal Commission to approve or deny a complete Coastal Development Permit application for an ADU within 60 days, running at the same time as the standard zoning review rather than after it, and it eliminates the ability to appeal an ADU coastal permit to the Commission. Public hearings are no longer required for these applications either. The net effect: a project that used to take the better part of a year for coastal review alone can now move through in roughly three to four months from submission to permit.
If you own in Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach and are weighing an ADU, plan on a long term rental from day one, since the recorded covenant and the state 30 day minimum make short term use a non-starter. Keep the unit at 750 square feet or under if minimizing impact fees matters to your numbers. And budget three to four months for the Coastal Development Permit rather than the old five to eight month estimate, since AB 462 put a real clock on that process. Always confirm your parcel's exact Coastal Zone boundary and covenant language with the city before you finalize plans, since boundary lines and local amendments shift.
If you would rather have someone track the covenant, the permit clock, and the rental terms for you once the unit is built, that is the kind of ongoing management our owners hand off to us.
This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Confirm with a licensed professional before you act.
Last verified: July 2026.
Topics: compliance, ADU, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Coastal Development Permit
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Schofield Properties is a family run property management company at 323 Richmond St, El Segundo, CA 90245. We have managed the South Bay since 1972 and personally oversee about 186 doors today. Book a call to talk about your property.
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