Rental property electrical fun...potential rewire??

[Miles Stanley]

I had an electrician come out to give me a bid on some electrical work identified in my inspection report. House was built in 1968 and APPEARS to have copper wire.

The long and short of it, he says the wiring in the house does not have a ground wire, but a tracer instead (which doesn't do anything). Therefore, none of the wall plugs can have the 3-prong outlets per code bc there is no grounding in the wires. He says we must install 2-prong outlets, but most appliances and other household thing-a-ma-jigs have 3-prong plugs (computers, vacuums, electronics, etc)… Also as a result, we cant have GFCI outlets installed where needed and most of the other things in the report can’t be done effectively. His suggestion for safety: rewire the whole house to the tune of $12k-15k (and that’s not including the work then needed to be completed in the report).

Disclaimer: I realize most of the items the inspection report calls out are per current code, which this house obviously was not built under. But there are some obvious safety and wish-list things I want done, nevertheless.

Easy fix you might say, just install 3-prong outlets and forget about it! OK, but what are the risks here? If a tenant’s computer gets fried or something else due to the lack of grounding, am I not responsible?

Surely not every landlord or homeowner out there is rewiring their older homes just ‘cuz. Is it just a matter of how much risk I’m willing to accept?

Has anyone else faced this? Must I rewire this house??

Also, he made the remark that banks may take issue with this when it comes to refinance...truth?