I’ve found that it’s very hard to find companies that actually do good residential low voltage work. Most of the local electricians we looked at just didn’t touch network wiring. A friend of a friend is an electrician and said this is mainly due to a generational divide in the industry and the available training. High-end homes increasingly use low voltage for all manner of stuff but few dudes know the systems well. This guy made a killing doing multimillion dollar homes because he said there were so few electricians in his entire area that could do the work, especially low voltage lighting and blinds.

One caution with paying a professional: the work can be sorta shoddy. A lot of low voltage dudes literally just lay the wire in your attic, crawlspace, or string it up in your basement. Following code isn’t a thing. Doing it right can be fairly expensive; you may need to take drywall, run conduit for vertical drops, etc. I found that most of the installers in this space were TV and AV installers with very limited understanding regarding first principles of networking. We paid to have our home wired, mainly because the initial install involved thousands of feet of Cat 6 and significant in-wall work. We basically retrofitted the entire home. We paid a lot only to find that the installer left a mess of wire in multiple spaces. It’s been subsequently corrected but I do all of my own work now for this very reason.

If you’re going to get it done, I’d recommend finding a company that specializes in networking and is willing to do residential. Depending on your area this may be hit or miss. Otherwise really consider doing it yourself.

depends on the area but got a guy to run 10 lines through the house for a little over $1000. and it’s going from top corner to opposite bottom corner of house; he’s doing all the drilling, fishing and terminations at all the end points. takes a few calls but worth it

One thing I discovered recently that has actually been around for a while is MoCA which in the current standard allows you to turn your coax cable in your home in to a 2.5 Gbps LAN. Doing something like this would allow you to drop a switch at each coax outlet in your home for ethernet distribution to that room of the house, and then you can do normal office cable management rather than having to run ethernet behind the walls.

You might price out what the adapters + switches would cost and then compare that price to what it would cost for someone to run the cable for you.

Personally I would only want the most qualified electrician who also knows details like using “plenum grade” cable to run ethernet in my home. I’ve heard way too many horror stories ranging from poor cable speeds due to damaging cables during install and miss-wiring keystone jacks, all the way to fires.

Is there any possibility of doing the work yourself? You’ll save a ton of money, in exchange for some sweat and possible headaches. I just ran 24 lines throughout my house, all terminating to my utility room. Granted, I have a drop ceiling in the basement, which made things infinitely easier.

What’s your ceiling situation like in your basement? Easy access? How are you with patching/painting walls?

If you do it yourself, the cost of materials and tools. Which would be about $150-$250. It is easy to do and learn and due to being low voltage there is very little risk. Just make everything as neat as possible.

If you hire a person, it is base $150 per run. But they usually have a minimum requirement.

$150/run in my area is what I get.

$2 a foot is what I used to charge with no patching of drywall holes if it came to that.

In my split level there is a single interior wall which spans all three levels. Find this wall in your parents house point the installer to it and put the networking cabinet against it.

$150 per drop

Split levels are hard to run and hide cleanly(assuming you DON’T WANT exposed wires) , unless you have a drop ceiling in the basement