Landlording two triplexes: Wiring and wiring cabinet suggestions?

Have you landlorded before? We have a single family home we legally converted to a triplex. Good idea to separate things even though you are on good terms with your parents. This is all based on local laws and market conditions so my experiences won’t be universal, but don’t worry too much about a landlord cabinet. I have a legal right to enter the property on minimal notice if common infrastructure fails, and 99% of tenants will gladly let you in if something like the Internet or boiler is down, and you need to enter to fix it. I personally wouldn’t make networking shared infrastructure though, because that’s just inviting headaches. Somethings you can’t avoid though like plumbing or heating (depending on how the building was constructed).

Second, remember this is an investment, so don’t let get costs out of hand by building in crazy redundancy, network closets, etc. You won’t personally live here, so don’t set it up according to your own needs. Keep costs to a minimum, wired network is already more than 99.9% of landlords provide. As long as you provide a safe, clean, functional home that’s up to all fire, zoning, occupancy, and safety codes, that should be enough. Anything additional, they can furnish themselves, or save up so they can do it in a home they own for themselves.

Outsource as much as you can, especially to services that are free. If there’s a problem with the boiler, I tell my tenants to call the HVAC company and book an appointment. If there is a plumbing problem, I tell them to call the home care company that I pay $10 a month for. This means way less headache for me, way fewer personal visits to the property, especially in the middle of the night. In this particular case, that means if you DO want to provide Internet (not required in all markets), give them a basic Comcast router and tell them to call Comcast if there is a problem.

I personally don’t think a centralized camera system will appeal much to renters. They’ll appreciate much more things like being responsive to complaints. We always pickup the phone if they call, and we will always checkout a problem, even if we don’t actually follow up with a solution because it’s too expensive. Our tenants really appreciate that because that’s is surprisingly A LOT more than many landlords will provide. Just feeling like you are heard matters a lot. Some landlords are incredibly hard to get a hold of if there’s a leak, or an appliance breaks. Don’t be that landlord. Your tenants will ask for a lot, but you don’t have to agree to everything.

Will doing tenant runs inside the units add value to how much you can charge? I see some benefits to having a specific POP drop/wallplate for a coax to one or two places in the living room area for TV, and maybe 1 in a closet or something for cable modem. And have those going out to a box outside or something to provide an easy connect/disconnect, and make it a flex conduit, with enough space for each a pair of fibers for an ONT if the TelCo ever upgrades to fiber in your neighborhood.

Otherwise, I wouldn't go really any more.

If you're actually going down to the studs, I suppose might as well go full bore and put in a bunch of conduit and run those coax plus some cat5e, costs won't really be hardly any different if you're down that far.

As for cameras... is this for your peace of mind or your tenants? In either case I'm 100% sure you need to disclose them, and check your local/state laws regarding audio and video (they often are separate) recording of random folks/friends/etc. And if it's for your tenants, I doubt it's particularly worth it for 99% of them and you won't get any additional in rent, so don't bother.

As hestermofet said, being more responsive and having HVAC/Plumbing/Electrical/Handyman services already figured out with specific companies, so that regular and emergency needs you won't be scrambling, but have already things ready when it happens.

This is something that would make sense for shorter term rentals or if the rest of the utilities aren't split up.

For the cost savings/profit possible it's a lot of headache to be the ISP. Dumb stuff like "my PS5 is getting restricted NAT" or "my teams call drops sometimes" is now your problem.

If you are going to pre-wire to avoid holes being blown through your walls, do enough coax to support both cable and satellite simultaneously. I've seen this become a tug of war all too often and that's how you end up with swiss cheese installs. An ethernet run or two for AP's is more than most tenants will ever use.

Even if you provide conduit AND drops everywhere I bet you good money the first time a tenant wants the box somewhere specific the installer is going to be drilling a hole in the wall and stapling the cable down.

Rule #1. DON'T BECOME AN ISP

So saving yourself trouble. You might not use Coax. But Coax is used by anyone who still gets TV service. And if you're a rental COAX is 100000000000% more useful then Cat5/6/7/8/9/10/9billion.

So provide Coax and one cat5 line you can use as telco. Provide these at the end so the wall jacks if they use them as phonelines. https://www.newegg.com/p/0Y1-05HJ-00004

For your central termination point. Make sure that is where you want the ingress point and it has power.

Now for the External how to hook this up. If the grounds do not have structured COAX installed for cable service in your area. CONTACT your local cable provider and see what they require. Or Fios. Or even if you allow satellite dishes. Determine this ingress is hopefully by that place you ended all the structured wiring internally. You have look up local code to see what kind of conduit you can put into the wall. Or have the cable/telco company contractors poke holes.

Look up the laws on what you can or can't deny on services. Your local telco might of gone full wireless on new "Pots" lines installs if your buildings have no telco infastructure. But you really want them to dig and poke holes for Cable OR Fios. People want their television.

And More about why you don't want to be the ISP. You want to collect rent. Anything that makes a renter angry and prevents them from giving you money is not ideal. You might restrict what services go into the complex. But in the end you want things like TV/Phone/Internet billed and controlled by a 3rd party. Even if you offered it for free. You leave it off the Provided list on your rental/lease agreement. I don't know your area but an angry customer in my area with no money to pay rent can do a lot of things with a sledgehammer and nothing can be done for about 6 months of court litigation just to get them removed from the premises. Let alone attempting to recover from damages. So have them angry at the ISP and not you.

As for Surveillance. You'd need to look that up also. But at most i'd put put up 3 camera. 2 for the road. And one for the courtyard. And make it known to all residents there is a recording device. But do not wire one up internally.

Call up a local or national ISP for reselling their service, or just refer clients to them. You want tenants to deal with the ISP for service, payment, technical issues, whatever they need. Gaming needs their own public IP and you can't really do that unless you go full on business internet with your own /28 or something. You also don't want to deal with security / DMCA issues.


I would not run twisted pair to tenants, optical handoffs are common here nowadays from single family homes to apartments. Much less things that can go wrong, copper = grounding / lightning / interference issues. ISPs don't do copper anymore and even GPON is on its way out. SFP(+) is simpler.


In home cabling is great to have, if it doesn't cost too much which it shouldn't if you order 8 homes x 4 drops at once, just terminate them at a small patch LSA patch panel in the wiring closet. Obviously run your own cables for a few cameras too but use (single mode) fiber between buildings / network racks.

Personally, if you have the need to do construction work anyway, I would run some conduit to each unit from a central closet of some kind that is accessible from the outside of the building if possible (with weatherproofing for the door etc.). That conduit can be used to pull a cat5e and single mode fiber for each one fairly easily and even coax if needed which will cover just about anything possible. Then let customers/tenants get whatever service they want as long as they coordinate the install with you to use those conduits.

If you can't do the conduits then just run one or 2 of each cable type now and label/document them all as well as you can.

Semi-recessed exterior enclosure? Probably needs to be lockable for your purposes?

Not recessed, seems more like electrical box, but I assume this or something similar might work too?