How Faulty Electrical Panels Kill Real Estate Deals

Scott Vogeli (00:00)
Hot sparks flying right onto paper next to all the wood framing. So it’s a terrible, terrible equation for safety. And so that’s something that we see all the time.

Erika Proctor (01:41)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika Proctor. And today I’m thrilled to be joined by Scott Vogeli, the visionary behind Modern Edison Electric, who’s on a mission to eliminate preventable electrical fires and keep home safe. Scott, it’s awesome to have you here.

Scott Vogeli (01:59)
Yeah, it’s awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.

Erika Proctor (02:01)
So Scott, for those who might not know you yet, give us the rundown. How did you get started in electrical safety and what sparked your passion for it?

Scott Vogeli (02:10)
Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, I guess I started my career back at Michigan State University. I did electrical tech program. It was kind of an experiment of types. I wanted to kind of see what career I want to go into. Just really fell in love with the labs that we were doing and the whole electrical trade just really kind of sparked an interest. So that led into, you know, my internship for four years and being a journeyman for four years and eventually getting my contractor’s license.

I opened my own residential specialized electrical contracting company in 2015. And I operated as an independent contractor for a lot of years. So I just really liked the whole, you know, come into somebody’s home and it was much more of like a hospitality type of feel. I was, know, in and out of their personal space and just really enjoyed like working on homes and improving people’s lives in their homes. And did that for a number of years and just did

you know, like a wide variety of home upgrades, whether it be helping with a pool install or helping, you know, fix and flip investors come in and make things right for the sale. Just kind of anything and everything electrical. What really kind of started the this mission of fire safety is I’ve got kind of a background in family history of firefighters. My grandfather was a firefighter in San Antonio, Texas for a lot of years.

⁓ My little brother is a firefighter in Palo Alto here in California. And so I was just very aware of that firefighter life and like what they do. But it was a certain point when I was coming into people’s homes and I started to see knob and tube wiring and melted plugs behind dressers and, you know, certain things that were, you know, really scary. And I was glad that I could, you know, be there to actually.

catch something before an actual fire happened or even see things smoking and almost starting fires and getting like an emergency call. So I started to kind of click the two together in my mind as I was coming into older homes and especially in Sacramento with a big population boom in the 1900s, 1920s. There’s a lot of Victorian homes that are all very beautiful and ornate and ⁓ unique.

but we’ve run into a lot of issues with the electrical systems and a lot of them have burned to the ground since. just has really kind of been something near and dear to my heart as far as preventing the electrical fires. I see it as a big responsibility for electricians in general to have that at least part of their business to be preventing fires. But just having my brother running into…

burning buildings and talking to him about his stories and hearing honestly just horror stories from my grandfather of things that really kind of are pulling on heartstrings as far as like kid safety and everything. I just kind of decided that it was something that the community at large really in Sacramento and even nationwide just.

really could use a deeper awareness of what a maintenance schedule looks like in an older home.

What’s the maintenance and upgrades that need to happen every decade, every so often? Like ⁓ changing tires on your car or changing the brakes. There’s just certain things that wear out over time. And if you schedule and keep ahead of them, you have a long-lasting, safe and reliable home. And so…

You know, like like you said in the intro, our mission is to prevent the 200 electrical fires that happen every year in Sacramento. You know, most of the time when we talk to the fire department about these house fires, the the homeowner is, you know, everything’s been working fine. I didn’t really understand, you know, what happened. And so I want to get on every local podcast I can and get with every real estate agent I can.

plug in wherever we can just to increase awareness and really get behind the mission of solving the problem of just the neglect over time that happens because it’s just not a regular thing that people move in and say, I’m going to make sure my electrical system is really top notch. So I think that’s just a big need that the community would really benefit from. So that’s why we’ve kind of gone deeper into that.

trying to fix that issue.

Erika Proctor (07:04)
Yeah, that’s a great mission, Scott. In your experience, what would you say is the biggest misconception that people have about electrical safety?

Scott Vogeli (07:13)
Yeah, I think the thing that I just hear all the time and it makes sense to You know, everything’s been working fine. Why do I need to work on my electrical system? You know, the panel’s been there for 70 years like it, you know, there’s nothing wrong with it Why would I need to replace it? and so that’s kind of the biggest thing that we have to overcome and really the simplest way to do it is just to educate a homeowner on

you know, the technology that was available at that time, you know, if it’s a 1950s panel or before, things have come a long way in reliability. Things have come a long way in the ability to shut the power off if there is an issue. And so, you know, if, you know, we’re having that conversation, it really just comes down to there’s certain things that happen over time that contribute to the panel being unreliable and not being able to protect the home from an electrical fire.

And so if you see it as like a weak link in a chain where the panel is really there to keep the whole house safe, that’s like your main hub of safety. And so if it’s unreliable, especially if you’re like fuses from 100 years ago, they’re just not gonna do the same job at protecting the family as today’s technology is able to. And so it’s obviously up to every homeowner

⁓ Everybody has a different risk tolerance, but if we can get in there and provide those deeper insights about what you can do and about what happens over time, then I think that is at least an opportunity for us to share that education so everybody can make an educated decision.

Erika Proctor (08:50)
Yeah, absolutely. Scott Vogeli, with the homes that you see in the, you know, the historical homes, what are some of the common issues that you see and how do you deal with those?

Scott Vogeli (08:57)
Yeah.

So a really common issue is the fact that you have plugs and switches in the home that get installed and they’ll last for 40 to 50 years. So the house can exchange hands many times and everything works. But one of the major issues kind of coming back to your question is

Once those plugs get to a certain point where they’ve been used enough times and the older ones are made of kind of more of a hard shell plastic, sometimes you’ll see them crack. Sometimes the plug doesn’t really fit anymore and it’s becoming loose. It just wears out over time and it becomes unreliable. So that would be one really common easy kind of low hanging fruit, if you will, to fire safety is just keeping an eye on your plugs, kind of considering what decade they’re from.

and potentially replacing portions of them or just all of them all at once every 30 to 40 years is kind of that mark where you would have a safe and reliable plug connection without worrying about that becoming loose and arcing and sparking on the inside and potentially melting and starting a fire. So that would be one. And then another one is ⁓ Zinsko panels. I know a lot of real estate professionals are

aware and familiar with Zinsko panels. They had colorful breakers. It’s an easy kind of giveaway if any homeowners panel has blue and red and green switches on the inside of the breaker box. That was a company that went out of business in the late 80s or late 70s, early 80s. And their fire failure rate is higher than any other company in history. And many times insurance companies have those

panels listed as an exclusion so that they won’t be covered.

They won’t have to pay out a claim if a fire was caused by a Zinsko. That’s not every case, but that is part of lot of policies. So it’s good to check for that. So those would be two things that definitely would be high on the list of any firefighter you talk to, high on the list of any electrical contractor as things that would be something you could look out for overall fire safety.

Erika Proctor (11:45)
Yeah. Wow. I didn’t realize that insurance policies would look at a brand and factor that in. So getting into like further into what you do with like the context of real estate, sales and inspections, how would you say electrical safety factors into the process? Like are there inspections that could derail a sale or put buyers at risk that you’ve seen?

Scott Vogeli (12:11)
Yeah, definitely. That’s actually really common. For the most part, all that stuff flies under the radar, which is a big shame in my opinion. I’m trying to kind of get there at that point and just educate buyers and sellers because it can have a big effect on the whole process. You have a situation where you may have fire safety concerns in the house and you’re putting the house on the market and

you maybe you hire a handyman to kind of, you know, clean up the house and do some painting and get it ready for sale. I’ve had many times where buyers agents will contact me and say, hey, it seems a little fishy here. Like there might be something deeper going on before we actually want to, you know, close escrow. We want to actually see what’s going on and we’ll get there and you know, lo and behold, ⁓

a house inspector will have gone through and basically just, you know, kind of notated a couple of things. GFIs work, you know, there’s, you know, a of light, a very light inspection and we’ll get in there and we’ll find all kinds of things, maybe chewed wiring in the attic from squirrels over time, you know, even things like we have a contractor network. So we’ll go past like leaking pipes and stuff. And so

During our inspections, we’ll actually do like a full deep dive on the house and really reveal what’s going on. And that can have a huge effect on the overall sale price, the offer price, the negotiation. And so that inspection and that report of like what everything would cost is a valuable tool for the buyer to protect themselves from running into a whole bunch of headaches and costs after they close escrow.

Erika Proctor (13:47)
Yeah. Speaking of chewed wires, I’m sure you’ve seen a thing or two. Do you have any noteworthy crazy stories or maybe not crazy, but something that was critical that you saw something that no one else would have?

Scott Vogeli (14:01)
Yeah, yeah. So we actually see that kind of on a regular basis, being that we work with real estate agents and we’re kind of like, hey, you let’s look a little deeper after a basic home inspection. And so we’ll see all that kind of stuff. Fairly commonly we have like handyman work or maybe just, you know, lackadaisical electricians who don’t take pride in their work.

Junction boxes in the attic is one of the things that happens all the time over the years, especially in a historic home. You have new lighting added or the kitchen gets new circuits or you have a home office. And these things are like add-ons. know, it’s very, very common for people to move in and kind of put portions of electrical system into the house. And so when that happens, you have to…

cut into the electrical system and expand off of the electrical system and do like adaptations to what’s existing. And those those junction boxes where you splice in, if you don’t put a cover plate and conceal those junction boxes and install them correctly, it can become a huge fire hazard because if something goes wrong in that junction box and it’s fairly common for connections over time with the wire nuts to become loose, sparks will fly out the back of the

wire nut. And so if you don’t have covers on your junction then you end up with sparks in the attic. And that can be, you know, dry old wood framing members that can be that batten insulation that has paper on the top. So you’ve got, you know,

hot sparks flying right onto paper next to all the wood framing. So it’s a terrible, terrible equation for safety. And so that’s something that we see all the time.

That’s that’s kind of

I always shake my head because it’s just so simple to put those cover plates on. But, you know, that’s something that a homeowner can easily poke their head up and just kind of shine a flashlight around and see if there’s, you know, a box with all kinds of wires hanging out of it that’s just, you know, posing a huge electrical threat right underneath it. Another one was we were in an old historic neighborhood and we were rewiring the knob and tube house and they had pulled down all the lath and plaster to do the rewire.

And there was a long strip of knob and tube that had just heated up and was charring the side of the board on, you know, in between the two floors. So was like the ceiling in the first floor and the floor in the second floor had like a huge char mark on the inside. And I think what helped that is that it was really concealed and there wasn’t a whole lot of oxygen for an actual flame to start. But that one was definitely something that stuck out to me as like, whoa, that was really close and glad we’re.

glad we’re rewiring again for the whole day.

Erika Proctor (17:18)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Scott Vogeli, I want to talk to you a little bit about networking here because a lot of listeners on the show, they’re looking to level up. They’re just getting started in the real estate world. What is your advice for people who are building their business? what kind of connections should they make? What kind of groups should they join? What’s made the difference for you?

Scott Vogeli (17:40)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I love the real estate world. I love the real estate community. I was back when I was working on my own and not building a team. I had a lot more free time and I did a lot of the real estate meetups. Like there’s so many like easy, you know, 20 bucks here, 50 bucks there. You join a community that has a great speaker and everybody gets together and you get, you know.

that flow of like sharing notes and ideas and struggles and there’s just so much growth that happens from that. And so that’s something if I was talking to somebody who was like, you where do I start? Where do I begin? Or like, how do I level up? Definitely just plugging in on a regular basis to communities that you have at your fingertips, whether it be something local and you go in person or you do webinars and you talk to people online. That is such a huge, powerful piece to just growth in general.

And especially for the real estate world. It just seems like real estate investors just love to collaborate and ⁓ share their investing ideas and level up and work on self growth and coaching programs and the next big idea. So I did some wholesaling for a while and was thinking about getting into fixing and flipping. And so made a lot of connections that way and just kind of spiraled up in the community, made a lot of connections, did a lot of electrical.

business as well through all that as kind of a side benefit just from making those connections. But yeah, I’d say, know, just search online for anything local, show up in person, shake hands. You know, especially in a place like Sacramento, there’s thousands of groups that I could just go out and join and have really valuable conversations with people.

Erika Proctor (19:16)
Yeah, totally. Scott Vogeli, what do you see next on the horizon for your electrical company? What vision or goal do you have in mind?

Scott Vogeli (19:25)
Yeah, so right now we’re just getting started. I worked on my own for about seven years and had a great time doing it, but wanted to just kind of step into that next chapter. so through reading a lot of books and just kind of listening to podcasts and talking to business coaches and everything, just developed a plan on what would really give my work.

purpose and that kind of ties back into the whole family of firefighting and the stopping of the fires and having an effect on that. And I also really want to just kind of create something that’s different in the contracting space. And so I’ve come up with like a vision for the next three years where we all as electricians, you know, have the opportunity to work for a company and get our hours.

and potentially work for a company long term or go out, set out and start your own business. What I have as a vision for the future of our company is kind of an in-between where I have a journeyman right now and he’s got an apprentice and a full-time work vehicle and we have an assistant that helps with the admin and I also have an office manager. And so we’re a small team right now and over the next 10 years our

goal is to get to 10 journeymen. And the way that I want to build it out is to create like an internal system for the journeymen to really grow and scale their abilities and their experience. And it would almost be kind of like a franchise model where they have more responsibility. have, you know, within the culture of our company, we’re going to have

sales training and we’re going to have ⁓ project management resources and we’re going to be documenting, creating systems for all these guys. And so it’s kind of like a quasi independent contractor training ground. And we’re at the beginning of it right now. But my journeyman currently is super excited to learn behind the scenes and to be project managing and doing sales role plays and learning about pulling permits and

getting more of an overview and having more responsibility. He schedules his own calendar, meets with the customers. And so that’s my vision for the business is to kind of have something unique moving forward where we incorporate AI anytime we can to make it as efficient as possible and to take off the workload wherever we can so the journeyman can really focus on the customer and the products and you know.

having everything really dialed as far as the customer journey goes and the installation. And so that’s our goal. Our three year goal is this mission of building a team of journeymen who really want to up level and they want to be a part of something special. They want to be a part of a team of guys who are working on improving their careers and improving their skills and, you know, stay with us, stay with the company as long as they’d like. I’ve got a

Goals and Dreams document for Alex and the Journeymen and our admin role and the office manager. I want everyone to kind of be working together to be like, you how can we be high performing? How can we achieve goals together and have like this platform of modern Edison with this mission to make, you know, the United States safe from electrical fires all together while, you know, we’re creating something better for each of us and.

know, giving the opportunity to bring journeymen on to not only just clock into a job, but to be a part of something bigger and to up level their own skills and be a part of a team that has like a high energy culture.

Erika Proctor (22:53)
That is so exciting what you’re building. Scott, before we go, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about Modern Edison Electric, or maybe they have a property that their electrical system needs to get checked. What’s the best way for them to reach you?

Scott Vogeli (23:08)
Yeah, easy one is modernedisonelectric.com. We’ve got a website there. You can also follow me on Instagram at modernedisonelectric. And I can go out and give myself for anybody who wants to text or call locally in Sacramento. ⁓ So that’s 916-642-9426. So any of those ways you can DM me or text me or get on our website. And I’d love to help with any investing properties. Like I said, I’ve got a

a little bit of knowledge when it comes to investment properties. So I’ve got kind of a mind to what an investor is looking for and we can kind of collaborate. And obviously anybody with a historic home locally, that’s our passion. We want to get your home and family safe. anybody who wants to reach out is definitely welcome.

Erika Proctor (23:51)
Scott, thanks so much for sharing your passion and expertise. know you’re saving lives by helping people protect their homes.

Scott Vogeli (23:59)
Yeah, definitely. That’s the plan and the goal and we’re in it for saving lives and protecting children and keeping Sacramento home safe and branching into the rest of the U.S. as we progress.

Erika Proctor (24:10)
Love it, Scott. For everyone tuning in, if you found value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations coming up with visionaries like Scott Vogeli who are making a real impact in the real estate world. We’ll see you on the next