Thoughts on Electric Heat for Rental?

[David Santore]

I'm in MA, and my property has oil. Typical 1900s style 2 family with dumpy - if any- insulation!  

It's set about 300 feet back from the natural gas line on the street, and it order to bring NG in it'd be $7K to jus run a line to the house on top of the NG furnace conversion - ouch!

Issues with Oil:

- tenants pay oil and are responsible for refilling the tank.  Sometimes this lapses, and it can get too low and cause the furnace to flame out and I have to purge it.  Occasionally, a heating tech needs to be called.  This is a headache for me and an added cost, and for tenants it's something they don't want to deal with

- Oil has yearly maintenance due to soot, and it's a radiator system so there's pipes everywhere that could burst or rust out over time.

Taking into account distribution, energy, transmission, and other miscellaneous charges, it would be $0.14073/kWh for electric pricing.

Electric would give me 

(1) easy addition with an electrician running wiring, baseboard, and probably a new panel 

(2) no need to take care of an oil tank, and 

(3) no furnace to maintain at all, only a hot water heater.

My biggest concerns is cost to operate. I've read electric baseboard is inefficient, and that insulation is more important for electric heating.  I've read about heat pumps, and that's there's more to electric heat than before so I am not sure if electric heat has improved in cost efficiency?

Other concern is rentability and resale.  If I sell the home, would prospective buys run at the thought of electric heat, and do tenants also usually run as well?