Two receptacles per wall, one 20-amp circuit feeding the back half, and a panel with three open slots. That was the electrical a five-person services firm inherited with a 2,400 square foot suite in a Grapevine strip office, and it sent the owner looking for electricians flower mound tx two weeks before move-in. Eight workstations, a printer wall and a server rack were already drawn on the floor plan. Tenant electrical is a number you can get before you sign, and on a suite that size it usually lands under $6,000.
Leased Suites Rarely Come Wired for Today’s Load
A shell suite is built to the landlord’s minimum, and that minimum runs a decade behind the tenant. Ten years ago a five-person office meant a few desktops, one copier and a fax line, and two general-purpose circuits covered it. Now the same footprint carries dual monitors at every seat, a PoE switch, a rack with a UPS, and a coffee setup that pulls more current than the copier ever did. The load doubled. The wiring did not. What we see most often is a suite last renovated for a retail tenant, where the receptacles sit where shelving used to be and nothing lands within ten feet of a desk. That is not a code violation, just a space nobody planned around your people, and the fix gets measured in circuits instead of outlets.
The Line Items That Drive a Tenant Bid
A tenant bid is four or five items, and one of them dominates. The subpanel is the big number, because it is what lets you add a circuit eighteen months from now without touching the landlord’s main gear. Dedicated circuits come next, one per heavy load and one per bank of desks, with a lighting change if the troffers sit over the wrong areas. Make every bidder break those out, permit and inspection included.
Code cycles push the numbers too. A trade rundown of the 2026 residential updates published in April 2026 by Buildermuse notes that in a new residence, every 15- and 20-amp general-purpose branch circuit now has to run through an AFCI breaker or a combination AFCI/GFCI device. That rule was written for houses rather than leased offices, and it still shows the direction of travel: more protective devices per circuit, more money per circuit. Ask which NEC edition your city has adopted, because Texas jurisdictions take them up on their own timelines.
One line on the sheet is not a budget question. Never let anyone but a licensed electrician open that panel or land a new circuit, whatever the cheaper price happens to be. If you smell hot plastic or see scorch marks at the panel, shut off the main breaker and call a licensed electrician before anything else gets plugged in.
A Worked Example for a Small Suite
Run the Grapevine suite as an illustration, with figures you would swap for your own quotes. Say a 100-amp subpanel fed from the landlord’s existing gear comes in at $2,600. Four dedicated 20-amp circuits for the eight workstations, at roughly $290 each, add $1,160. The printer wall runs $340, and an isolated circuit for the rack and its UPS runs $520. Relamping six fixtures over the desk pods is $480, and the permit with inspection is $300. That is $5,400 all in, which is why the line worth arguing over is the subpanel rather than the receptacles.
Landlord Allowances Change What the Tenant Pays
Who pays for what is a lease question, and it varies deal by deal. Some landlords fold a build-out allowance into the term; others deliver as-is and hand you the panel schedule. Get the tenant improvement clause read beside a real electrical scope before you sign, because an allowance quoted per square foot only helps if it covers the subpanel. On the suite above, $8 a foot would have covered the electrical scope twice over. Call it twice over. Closer to once and a half, honestly, once the data cabling and the two mini-split disconnects the landlord excluded get added back in.
Budget the Panel First and Everything Follows
Price the subpanel first. The circuits, the lighting and the permit size themselves off that one decision, and a scope built in that order rarely moves more than a few hundred dollars between the bid and the final invoice. The panel schedule tells the truth long before the floor plan does. Ask around for electricians Flower Mound TX owners have actually used, get two written scopes during the option period, and compare the subpanel line before you compare totals. A tenant holding a written number negotiates, and a tenant holding a guess pays for it in change orders.
