Buffalo Rewire · Buffalo & Erie County
Ten to thirty thousand. Here is what moves the number and why the cheapest quote usually is not the same job.
$10,000 to $30,000 and up. That is the honest range for a whole-house rewire in Buffalo.
Per square foot, it runs roughly $6 to $10. A 1,400 square foot cottage sits near the bottom of the range. A 2.5-story double with a service upgrade sits near the top.
For calibration: the national average for knob and tube replacement is about $24,300, with a range of $12,000 to $36,600, per Angi’s 2026 data. Buffalo jobs often land below that average, not because our labor is cheap but because our houses fish well. Basements below, attics above, balloon framing between. Wire travels through these houses.
Anyone who gives you a firm number without seeing the house is guessing. But the range should never be a mystery, so here is how the number actually gets built.
Square footage is a proxy for what really drives cost: circuit count and cable path. A rewire is priced by how many circuits have to be built and how hard each one is to route. Bigger houses have more rooms, more outlets, more runs. That is all the square-foot number is telling you.
Which means two houses of identical size can quote thousands apart, legitimately. The difference is in the list below.
Partial remediation, killing only the live knob and tube and keeping sound newer circuits, can cost half of a full rewire or less. When a house was substantially rewired in past decades and only a few original circuits remain, partial is the right buy.
The trap is the mostly-original house. If seventy or eighty percent of the circuits are knob and tube, partial pricing creeps toward full-rewire money while leaving you with a house that is still part old wire. Then the next inspection, or the next carrier, or the eventual buyer reopens the whole question. The difference between the two scopes is explained on the remediation page. The dollar rule is simple: if partial costs more than about two-thirds of full, buy full.
A double in Riverside is the version of this we see most. The owner had two quotes for what read like the same rewire: nine thousand and twenty-two thousand. It was not the same job. The nine left the panel, excluded permits and inspection, did not touch the knob and tube buried under the attic insulation, and said nothing about patching. It was a partial job priced to win a phone call. The carrier’s requirements, the reason the owner needed the work at all, would not have been met. The letter does not care what you spent. It cares what remains.
So when quotes land far apart, ask each contractor one question: what does this price not include? The honest answer is specific. The evasive answer is your warning.
Standard for us: a deposit to schedule and buy material, progress payments as sections of the house go live on new wire, and the balance after the electrical inspection passes and you hold the sign-off paperwork. You should never be asked for the full amount up front, by anyone, for any wiring job.
Nobody has this money sitting in a drawer, and the letters and inspection reports that trigger this work never arrive at a convenient time. That is exactly why the number should be real from day one. A padded range you can plan around beats a tight number that grows every Friday.
The expensive quote and the cheap quote are usually not the same job. Make them show you the difference.
Send us your inspection report or insurance letter and your square footage. We will tell you where your house realistically lands in the range, free.
Request a written rewiring assessment. We respond within one business day.