One Savvy Strategy Let These Homeowners Cruise Through Planning Laws to Build Their Home in Only 9 Months

"It wasn’t your usual two-car garage," says Space Division’s Marc Lithgow of the 1980s brick structure that occupied a sloped lot next to a white wooden manor in the leafy Auckland, New Zealand, suburb of Mount Albert. Thirty years on, Lithgow’s clients—a builder, his wife, and their two children—bought the land along with the garage.