Need Help with a Ball Park Price for Residential House

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Seven-Delta-FortyOne said:
I think he was joking.

$6,000 to wire a 2,000sf house wouldn’t pay for materials, let alone anything else. 👍
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Thanks for the validation. I'm beginning to think T&M or giving him a range of $25 to $30K. 50 hours to rough wire, 50 hours to finish. That's $14k labor, $11 to $16 k materials. Then if I ever get a set of plans I can estimate off them. NJ is still on the 2017 NEC and about to adopt the 2020 in September which will change the price too. Maybe labor is too low?
 
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You could probably spend a couple hours and just mentally go through the whole project.

Walkthrough and planning: X days.

Nail all the boxes on: X days.

Drill all the holes and pull the wire: X days/X Guys.

Make up: X days.

Panel: X days.

Feeder: X days + X equipment.

Inspection:

Total it all up. Might want to get a little more accurate for a bid, but that’ll give you a good ballpark.

You might find that you don’t want to compete in new track home work. Might find you get underbid and you can make 3 times more at service work. Who knows.
 
electrofelon said:
Yeah. That is Seattle. Back in upstate NY you likely couldn't charge that much. Labor there is about 2/3 of Seattle. So that house might be 20k in a cheaper market.
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That makes sense. Here in NJ prices of houses and everything else is ridiculous. I've been looking for a good used van and over the last 6 months the prices have gone up thousands. A lot of junk too.
 
Seven-Delta-FortyOne said:
You could probably spend a couple hours and just mentally go through the whole project.

Walkthrough and planning: X days.

Nail all the boxes on: X days.

Drill all the holes and pull the wire: X days/X Guys.

Make up: X days.

Panel: X days.

Feeder: X days + X equipment.

Inspection:

Total it all up. Might want to get a little more accurate for a bid, but that’ll give you a good ballpark.

You might find that you don’t want to compete in new track home work. Might find you get underbid and you can make 3 times more at service work. Who knows.
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That's great advice. And you are right that I really don't want to compete in the new home residential. Its nice for a stable income until someone comes along and under bids you halfway through the development. And being a one man show I would lose out on service work.
 
One thing to consider...

If you don't do residential new construction every day, there's no way you can do it as quickly as someone who does.

If the guy really wants you, he has to know you're going to price it considerably higher.

Around here, a basic spec house like that would be wired for $12-14k every day

@electrofmight be right with $25k
You'll need to be that much higher because you're going to take twice as long as someone who does it every day
 
Wow. Round here, anything more than about 2200 is not really spec, and you need to start adding “custom” features, and market it and sell it as a custom.
 
I'm a commercial/industrial electrician last 20yrs. Would do a resi panel change/update from time-to-time. During covid, lots of businesses scaled back... so I took on an acquaintance's residential renovation.
Simple 1400sqft, 2 bed, 1-1/2 bath, pantry/mud room, PLUS complete kitchen gut and some knob&tube mitigation. New 200amp panel, replace 100 panel with 125 sub.
$24k total.
$80 an hour labor.
Materials came in about $6k..... even though the home owner purchased and installed most of the lighting/fans (I installed the recessed lighting).

I've never been SO HAPPY to be a commercial electrician,
Jeff
 
James L said:
One thing to consider...

If you don't do residential new construction every day, there's no way you can do it as quickly as someone who does.

If the guy really wants you, he has to know you're going to price it considerably higher.

Around here, a basic spec house like that would be wired for $12-14k every day

@electrofmight be right with $25k
You'll need to be that much higher because you're going to take twice as long as someone who does it every day
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Definitely right. Thank you.
 
type3bum said:
I'm a commercial/industrial electrician last 20yrs. Would do a resi panel change/update from time-to-time. During covid, lots of businesses scaled back... so I took on an acquaintance's residential renovation.
Simple 1400sqft, 2 bed, 1-1/2 bath, pantry/mud room, PLUS complete kitchen gut and some knob&tube mitigation. New 200amp panel, replace 100 panel with 125 sub.
$24k total.
$80 an hour labor.
Materials came in about $6k..... even though the home owner purchased and installed most of the lighting/fans (I installed the recessed lighting).

I've never been SO HAPPY to be a commercial electrician,
Jeff
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Yeah, I wish more commercial would come my way. You are very fortunate. Good for you.
 
retirede said:
If you have a good relationship with the guy, you might consider discussing doing it T&M. Probably fairest to everybody.
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That may be fine, but often in preplanning stages they do want to know how much $$$ they will need to be able to do the project.

Then when they figure out what they want will cost they start planning for what they are willing to settle with.
 
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