Building an ADU in Citrus Heights: what a local contractor actually sees on these lots
Citrus Heights is one of the easier places in the Sacramento region to add a backyard unit, mostly because of how it was built. Quarter-acre ranch tracts from the 60s and 70s, deep rear yards, real side-yard access. The friction here isn't the lots — it's a small city building counter that swings from fast to slow, a scattering of protected oaks, and the usual older-home surprises hiding behind a stucco wall. Here's how we work through all of it.
Old Auburn Road lots give setbacks and access
Drive any street off Greenback, Antelope, or Old Auburn Road and you'll see the same DNA: a single-story ranch built sometime between 1958 and 1975, set toward the front of a generous lot, with a long flat yard running back to a wood fence. That layout came out of an era when land was cheap and unincorporated Sacramento County let builders spread out. It happens to be the ideal canvas for a detached ADU.
The numbers that matter are setbacks and access. State law lets a detached ADU sit four feet off your rear and side property lines, and most of these tracts have side yards wide enough to walk material to the back without tearing out a fence permanently. That's not true everywhere in the region — the close-in Sacramento grid neighborhoods often choke on access — but in Citrus Heights it's the norm rather than the exception.