Investor · King of Prussia, PA · Member since 2015 · 1 post · 0 votes
I have a 9-unit apartment building just outside of Philadelphia. It's a low-income neighborhood so tenants tend to gravitate towards Dish TV for their choice of TV service. I never allow dishes in my SFR's much less do I want to see nine dishes bolted to the front of a nice looking historical building.
My Question: Is there a way to get a single TV/Internet service to the building and run that service to each unit? And is this advisable?
I could bill it back to the tenants or include it in the rent (or perhaps the provider could do direct billing). My thoughts are that it could be a nice value-add to attract new tenants without having the cable guy constantly in and out every time someone moves in or switches providers.
Potential problems I see are if a tenant wants a movie package or if they have technical issues connecting their computer to the internet, etc. Does Comcast or Verizon offer a service for landlords of multi-family properties?
Rental Property Investor · Medford, OR · Member since 2016 · 70 posts · 27 votes
8y
You can share internet connections to all those in the building or complex without issue. You might need a business account to do that. Problem is you will be responsible for the wiring, wireless, switching, routing just like a business would be. They will most likely just provide a single link to your firewall and thats where they end. You would need to manage the firewall.
Is it gonna be open communication or are you going to vlan/segregate each unit? This would be similar to a hotel IMO. I am a Sr network Engineer and I would be cautious about providing internet due to the calls it would generate. I have thought about this as well.
With that said maybe there are Hotel internet provisioning systems that make this easy? I am not sure about that. Still going to cost though.
Rental Property Investor · Cleveland, MN · Member since 2017 · 518 posts · 354 votes
8y
When they ran high speed internet/cable in the area of my 8-plex they offered to wire the whole building all at once for free. They don't want to have to do it tenant by tenant later, so that's why they do it that way. They just went up in the attic and ran the wires down through the walls. I let the tenants know that they were coming and that they could either be home that day or I would let them in to do it. Now they can hook up to cable or internet if they choose to.
I would call the local cable/internet company and see if they can do that for you.