Updated over 7 years ago on . Most recent reply
Do you update electrical in your rentals?
When I'm looking at houses to purchase as rental properties, a decent percentage still have fuse boxes. Many also have all or mostly two prong outlets. I feel like a lack of 3 prong outlets is impractical for modern life and fuse boxes are a pain to deal with. I know they would have been a deal breaker for me when I was a renter, particularly the 3 prong issue.
For reference, I'm looking mostly at SFH in middle class neighborhoods, not low income but not high end. I've been estimating that I should budget around $3,000 to update these in a typical house, but haven't actually done any yet. So here's my questions for you:
1. Do you update to a circuit breaker and 3 prong outlets for your rentals?
2. What's a ballpark price to expect that this would cost?
Most Popular Reply
No fuse boxes; there are municipalities where I have rentals that will not pass inspection in a rental with fuse boxes. See if you have that in your area.
If there are fuses still, you might find knob and tube wiring - another thing that the insurance companies don't like.
Unless you are opening walls up, you can avoid re-wiring all receptacles to three conductor; many newer devices come with power packs that only use two prongs anyway.
Once you start re-wiring, find out first how much code upgrading you will be asked / required to do. Arc fault breakers, hard-wired and interconnected smoke and CO alarms, GFCI for almost all kitchen receptacles - those are just some code changes you might have to comply with.