Can anyone give me a rough cost for rewiring?

[AGreenWitch]

1950s detached house, 1300sqft. Needs rewiring. North of England. Will be empty so free range.

I’m considering making an offer on it, I don’t have anyone to ask other than Google so asking here too.

We paid £1800 last year. 3 bed 1930s end of terrace. Small independent electrician, very skilled. Took 2 days I recall

Wow @KentishBob I was expecting £8-10k after googling! That's sounds like a bargain. This house is three beds, two receptions, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, hallway.

Thank you too btw.

£8k-£10k is about what I'd expect. Anything cheaper will likely be from the house being totally empty, so sparky can go in, do the job and walk out in a couple of days. The job is a lot harder in an occupied, busy house.

It will be empty @YorkshireGoldDrinker. Well it might have boxes stacked in ground floor rooms but I could put them in places that didn't impede access to lights/sockets etc.

About £1k per room.

Thanks @ArtTheClownIsNotAMime that sounds like what I imagined and will bring me back to the £10k ish figure I think.

We paid £3k for a 3 bed semi in Manchester 8 yrs ago, it was also unoccupied/unfurnished at the time (been told later that this was a bit steep considering it was empty). So I'd say estimate no more than 5k.

I would estimate £6.
Does it need a full rewire or just updating to modern safety specs? If it need a full rewire you will have to plaster and redecorate too so that will put the cost up.

Full rewire. Yes I realise that. My plan is to put things in storage, remove carpets from upstairs, rewire, plaster in the channelling, get a decorator in and carpets fitted upstairs before I move in.

I can estimate the cost of everything else easily enough, it’s the rewire costs I haven’t any experience of.

Unless you are replacing the carpets, they don't need to be removed, just rolled back and then put back down. You should be able to see where the electric access points are when you roll the caroeta back as the boards usually look different and are screwed down so they can be accessed easily.

I want to replace the carpets.

We done this 3 years ago. Empty 3 bed end terrace. DH a tradesman so had ceilings, walls down where needed and also tracked walls in advance. This was part of a full renovation. It cost just over 4k.

Thanks @maggiesleapp ….. I don’t intend getting my hands dirty 😂 . Basically I’ll get someone in to strip carpets, curtains, tracks etc. Empty house, rewired, made good, my decorator will go in to decorate the upstairs, light fittings, carpets, move in, blinds ordered.

Then I’ll have a breather before moving onto the downstairs, no carpets required as it is original parquet which will just need refinishing.

If there is parquet, rewiring the downstairs might be a lot more destructive/expensive and you might be restricted on where you put sockets.
If you rewire, I would add a load more sockets at the same time.

Victorian semi 3 bed here and it was 9k without "making good" so we still have holes in ceiling and channels up walls for sockets 3 yrs later. Couldn't afford 13.9k they wanted to do it all. Edit to add we are South East but not London expensive.

Oh @GCSEBiostruggles that sounds hard. I need to get it done and move on.

I’m meeting someone to walk through the house to give me their thoughts, known to a colleague and recommended. He wants to look at coming down rather than up to preserve the flooring. Sounds good to me as I would prefer not to damage it. It is literally as it was when the house was built. I’d rather repair the ceilings.

We got our house rewired in late 2025 for a bit under £11k. We got four quotes - three were around that same level, one was £13.5k.

For context, our house is a four-bedroom house in outer London, and the price included lots of sockets; four rooms had both ceiling lights and 2x wall lights; and we included wiring for CCTV, a hot tub and electric car charging (just the cable at this point, not the charging port itself). We weren't living there at the time. This didn't include any plastering over the chases etc.

I would hope your rewiring price would come much lower than ours by avoiding London prices and having one less bedroom etc. While it was a bit daunting, I really like knowing that all of our electrics are new and it was great to choose what we wanted and where.