Hard to answer without more info. If your home was on the market for 5 million, 15k would be nothing.

How long has your home been on the market? How many offers? What does your agent say?

If your home is languishing in a sellers market and this is the only offer you've had in months, maybe you take it.

Also the question is also how old is the house and what was the code back when it was new.

Assuming that the only problem with the electrical system is what you've mentioned, the cheaper thing to do would be have the wiring grounded and replace the breaker box. $15,000 is an awful lot of money. It sounds like buyer may be trying to re-negotiate contract. I wish you the best.

If this was disclosed prior to an offer I would do nothing. If it came up in inspection, I might offer a small amount to try to appease them ever so slightly.

The buyer is looking for a price reduction. You don't have to do anything. Your wiring is probably perfectly legal, and even if it weren't there is still no requirement that you do anything about it, though once you know it's not legal you have to disclose it (that does not mean up to current code-- every house built before the last code revision is probably not up to current code). Depending on how badly you want to sell the house you can respond by giving them all, some or none of the money. Lack of grounds would be obvious on even the most casual walk-through or glance at the service panel, so it's not a surprise.

Tell them that the house meets current code and the GFCIs are in place as recommended for safety.

No reduction. And I bet that if they got it, they'd want a credit for a bunch of other stuff.

I would not buy the house with the wiring it has.

Your house is obviously older. The buyer knew that when they made an offer. This shouldn't have come as a surprise.

I've got the same situation with my 1952 home. All of the areas with big electrical load, kitchens, baths, and utilities are completely wired with replacement wiring, GFCI's and newer electrical panels with updated breakers. I'm sympathetic. I bought the house with adequate electrical and I improved it, even though I didn't need to do it.

As long as it isn't aluminum, knob and tube or in an area that carries a heavy electrical load, it's not a problem. Rather than telling the guy to pound sand as we all would want to do, perhaps you should take the high road. Try to arrange a little education for him. Alternatively, a small amount towards a new electrical panel with more capacity might be a compromise. 15K is way out of line and a deal killer. Maybe the guy is just ignorant and the home inspector scared him with his report. It's worth it to find out before you react. I will note that with ignorant or greedy potential buyers, sometimes it's just best to say no and lose the deal. These are the types of people who sue later.

"I would not buy the house with the wiring it has."

He's baaack.

I would have an electrician come and verify the info from the inspection, what is to code and give a recommendation on what, if anything needs to be done. If he feels work needs to be done, get an estimate or bid for that. That would be the most I would offer. If there is something small, you might just have the work done (it is still your house) and tell your buyer end of story. If he walks, you shouldn't have any open issues for a new buyer.

While your wiring might be grandfathered in (and therefore legal), it isn't up to today's code and it is old. The price of your house should reflect that. I don't know your price or your market, so I can't judge whether this is the case or not already.

If you don't want to rewire your house or offer a reduction, that's purely up to you just like the initial price was up to you. You don't have to justify it. Just tell them that the initial price took the state of the wiring into account.

You can either wait around for another buyer who doesn't care about the wiring or get it fixed yourself and bump your price up a bit and advertise that it's been totally rewired.

Whether 15 grand is a reasonable price is totally dependent on your specific situation.

If all the comps in your area are of similar age, then likely have similar wiring, then I would say that no price reduction is warranted -- your price is competitive with the market. There are other factors to consider, of course, such as how brisk the market is in your area and overall condition of the house compared to others -- which should already have been accounted for when the house was priced and put on the market.

I agree with possibly getting an independent opinion, maybe adding a ground (that isn't that complicated, I think -- my 1941 house had one added) and trying to find out why it is an issue for the buyer (eg scared by inspection). But, overall, I would just say "No" unless I knew of some reason that giving them some sort of price break was truly justified.

It is possible - and NM code requires it - to add a ground to the supply panel. Any work that touches an old panel has to add the grounding. It added about $50 to my bill.

But giving a credit - not putting it in escrow to be paid to the contractor - is not a good idea. A lot of those "allowances" never get used for the reason that was given when the buyer asked for it.

@lazy_gardens - Interesting. I haven't been involved in all that many real estate transactions, but I've never heard of putting funds in escrow when it is something the seller and buyer agree on. If they decide to live with the defect, that's their decision. We did once use an escrow, but it was for something which the buyer and we disagreed on at closing, and we didn't want to hold up the transaction, so we resolved it later on.

Yep, it seems vindictive to me to force the buyer to spend the money on the fix. Whether they end up fixing it or not doesn't have any effect on the seller. That money is still gone from the seller's pocket. And if they don't fix it then they are going to run into the same problems with buyers in the future when they go to sell the house.

It seems like a hassle and a complication without any actual gain. But to each his own.

The only time that an escrow account might be useful for repair work is if you agree to spend UP TO a certain amount of money to fix something, but it may cost less. Therefore the money goes into an escrow account, the buyer gets whatever fixed and withdraws their amount and the remainder goes back to the seller.

But I see that situation as being pretty rare. Usually estimates of the actual costs would be found before going through with the deal.