Call it the dingbat granny flat.

The so-called dingbat, a type of apartment popular in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s with a traditional carport that gives it a distinctive look, is more often getting expanded with dwelling units commonly known as granny flats as the result of a state law signed a few years ago to spur the creation of more housing that eases an acute shortage of residential properties statewide.

Developers are snapping up the love-it-or-hate-it midcentury buildings, and converting their open carports into accessory-dwelling units , known as ADUs, permitted by California's Assembly Bill 68. Aiming to encourage housing construction, the measure allows for more ADU construction in existing single-family and multifamily properties.

Updates to the low-rise properties that dot Los Angeles like its signature palm trees offer an opportunity to help alleviate the city's housing crisis. In a way, the market has come full circle because dingbats were built in the 1950s and 1960s to add residences to the densely populated city.

Paul Jesman is one Los Angeles real estate broker and apartment investor, among others, working to reinvent the dingbat. He said he stumbled onto the idea to add the ADUs after he was sent information about apartments listed for sale at 5077 Lemon Grove Ave.

The broker marketing the property said the owner was working with a contractor who believed that the structure's carport could be transformed into ADUs. Jesman said he was shown construction sketches of the potential ADUs and figured he'd give it a shot. So, he bought the Lemon Grove property and built a pair of ADUs on the property.

"I had done construction, but nothing like this before," Jesman said.

Since then, he has become a proselytizer of sorts for combining dingbats and ADUs. A recent post of his on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, generated more than 100,000 impressions.

Jesman has worked on roughly a half-dozen projects where ADUs have been added to dingbats. In some cases, he's bought apartments and in others he's assisted with construction management or helped make deal connections. He said ADUs can make investing in dingbat apartments more financially attractive.

Paul Julian, president of Irvine, California-based apartment owner Advanced Real Estate, said adding units by subtracting parking from a dingbat property may still make the property more valuable for landlords — despite the decrease in parking options.

Apartment properties that lack parking tend to be less desirable for renters, which means landlords often can't ask for a premium in rents that accompany units with parking. However, these expanded dingbat units typically bring in more new rental revenue, and increase the property's value, than the original dingbat with parking, according to Julian.

Apartment owners may realize more profit from adding ADUs, "but the parking experiences for tenants and neighbors might suffer a bit," Julian said.

Of course, the demand for on-street parking in residential neighborhoods varies greatly throughout Los Angeles, and, in general, being close to commercial corridors creates higher demand, said Colin Sweeney, director of public information at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

There should be ample opportunities around Los Angeles for developers looking to buy dingbats and add ADUs. No data exists on how many dingbats were constructed in Los Angeles, but roughly 32,800 apartment properties built between 1950 and1970 still stand in Los Angeles County, according to CoStar data.

David Evans, a Los Angeles multifamily broker and senior associate at Kidder Mathews, said he's seeing more Los Angeles apartments marketed for sale with opportunities to build ADUs. In West Hollywood, an apartment developer recently built six ADUs in a multifamily property in perhaps the most expansive use of the law so far.

"It's pretty popular," Evans said. "Most investors are trying to add value to properties any way they can."