A general home inspection covers electrical, but broadly. Inspectors are generalists, they do not open walls, and their reports tend toward "recommend evaluation by a qualified electrician" on anything ambiguous. If the house is over thirty years old, that sentence can conceal a five figure difference.
Look at the panel first
Open the door, not the cover. You are looking for:
- A fuse box rather than breakers, meaning original service and likely original wiring
- Tandem or "cheater" breakers stacked in, meaning the panel ran out of space years ago
- Rust, water staining, or a panel on an exterior wall exposed to weather
- Handwritten labels that do not match reality, or no labels at all
- A brand flagged in the inspection report as having a failure history
- Main breaker rating: 60 or 100 amp on a house you intend to add an EV charger and AC to
A panel upgrade is a known, quotable number. Get it quoted before you finalise your offer rather than after.
Count the grounded outlets
Walk the house with a three-prong plug tester. Two-prong outlets throughout mean ungrounded circuits, which usually means original wiring. Three-prong outlets on an old house are not automatically good news either. Someone may have simply swapped the device without adding a ground, which is worse because it looks safe and is not. A tester will show that.
Look in the attic and the crawlspace
This is where the truth lives. Look for cloth-wrapped cable, individual conductors on ceramic knobs, junction boxes with no covers, and splices made with tape rather than inside a box. Also look at whether insulation has been blown over old wiring that was never designed to be buried.
Check what the additions did
Garages, casitas, patio covers and converted porches are where unpermitted work concentrates. Signs: extension cord run as permanent wiring, indoor-rated cable used outdoors, receptacles with no GFCI protection in a garage, or a subpanel wired without a separated neutral and ground.
Aluminum wiring
Homes wired roughly 1965 to 1975 may have aluminum branch circuits. This is a negotiating point and an insurance question, not necessarily a deal-breaker. Remediation with approved connectors at every termination is one path. Replacing the branch circuits is the thorough one. Get both quoted. See whole house rewiring.
Test every GFCI you can find
Press test on each one. No trip means no protection. Cheap to fix, but it also tells you something about how the property has been maintained.
Ask about the service entrance
Look at where the utility drop lands. Is the mast straight and secure, is the weatherhead intact, is the meter base rusted? Storm damage to a service mast is a same-day repair when it happens, but a mast already leaning is a future call you will be making.
What a pre-purchase electrical inspection gets you
We walk the property specifically for electrical: panel condition and capacity, circuit testing, grounding and bonding, GFCI and AFCI protection, visible wiring in attic and crawlspace, outdoor circuits, and evidence of unpermitted work. You get a plain-language list separated into "needs doing before you move in", "budget for in the next two years", and "fine, leave it".
That list is also a negotiating document. Sellers respond differently to a specific quoted figure than to "recommend evaluation by an electrician".
Book one through the electrical inspection service, or call and tell us the address and the age of the property.