Illegal electric install found after closing. What would you do?

[Jacob P.]

I'm a couple months into owning a rental property in NY. Bigger Pockets was a huge getting it nailed down! Now I've got my first post-purchase question.

The home I purchased was a gut renovation flip. To make a long story short: Our tenants reported that the main circuit breaker has been tripping with some frequency, so we brought an electrician out today.

He isolated the problem: romex wiring outside the house going to the central A/C unit. We have to re-run the wiring inside PVC or galvanized pipe, and will need to punch through some walls to make it happen. I'm waiting on an estimate form the electrician, but based on our conversation, I wouldn't be surprised if it comes in around $2Kish.

One thing that the electrician noted is that using Romex for exterior electricity is "illegal" for outdoor electricity in NYC. I don't know the specifics of the code here, but I am very inclined to reach out to the seller and ask them to handle this fix. I'm thinking that I would have some leverage based on the fact that their wiring did not seem to be up to code, and I figured that a friendly reach out might be better at this stage than going super in depth into their legal obligations, etc.

If anyone on the forums has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear!

[Tom V.]

Welcome to landlording.  This won't be the last time something like this comes up.  You can get wrapped up in blaming the inspector or the seller or whatever, but you own the place.  Fix it and find something more important to worry about.   It could be worse.