I'm completely shocked. I gave a guy a price to relocate and upgrade the electrical service from the back of the home to within 10ft. of the front corner of the home as required by the power company. 200amp service with 15ft. 2in. GRC mast. 50ft. 200amp SER cable fished through an attic not big enough even crawl into. Replace two existing fuse boxes with a one new 200amp panel. My price $3,585.
The guy decided he wants the rest of the house completely rewired and calls to see if I'll give him a price to rewire the whole house and bring it up to code. It's about 2,500 sq.ft. with old knob and tube wire and some old ungrounded romex. Some walls are sheetrock and some are lathe & plaster. He gutted the basement walls and ceiling but the upstairs is staying and will have to be fished.
The guy is a real estate investor and bought the home to fix it up and sell it.
I was supposed to meet him tomorrow morning to look at the job and give him an estimate. He called back and cancled. He said he found an electrical contractor in the phone book that said he would do the whole job including the service upgrade for $6,000. The guy advertises he's a small job specialist.
I didn't know what to say I was in shock. The guy must be nuts. I sure hope he enjoys himself because he sure isn't doing it for the money.
Oh well. I just completed a couple of service upgrades for $3,000 each and just received a deposit to start another one next week for $3,500 plus I'll be doing a few other things for a total of $5,500.
It's not that customers aren't willing to pay more for service upgrades. It's that contractors aren't willing to charge more. On one of the service upgrades I did for $3,000 the guy received a bid of $2,000 but went with me anyway even though I was a $1,000 more.
I'd really like to be getting $5,000 for service upgrades. Which wouldn't be that hard to do if contractors weren't giving them away for $1,500.
By the way I don't consider it a service upgrade if you just replace the meter and leave the old rotted wire from the meter to the panel and leave the old fuse box or FPE panel inside. A service upgrade for me means a new meter with main breaker relocated to within 10ft. of the front corner of the home as per the power company requirements here, new SER cable from the meter/main to the inside panel location and a new inside panel. There's no way I can do this for $1,500.