Insurance came back at 4,700 against the 2,200 I modeled

Two separate things are driving that quote and they price differently.

Roof age with actual cash value settlement means a claim pays the depreciated value of a 47 year old roof, which is close to nothing. Carriers price that exposure high and many will decline it. A new roof usually moves both the premium and the settlement basis, because the underwriting question changes from when will this fail to what does it cost to replace. Get your broker to requote the same building with a hypothetical new roof so you have the number in hand before the inspection period closes.

Cloth-wrapped wiring and a 100 amp panel are a separate underwriting item, and this one often survives a new roof. Some carriers decline older wiring types outright regardless of condition, and availability and pricing for older electrical vary by state and by carrier appetite in your specific market. A licensed electrician's letter documenting the condition and any remediation is the document brokers usually ask for. Confirm what your carrier will accept in writing rather than assuming.

On the bucket question, the loan and the insurance follow different rules. Residential financing runs through four units, which is the reason this asset class works as a step up from single family. Property insurance carriers draw their own lines, and many treat a three or four unit building as a different product from a single family rental with different forms and different pricing. Those two facts are unrelated to each other.

Budget insurance per unit rather than per building when you underwrite this size going forward. Your single family figures do not transfer.

Nine days is plenty. Get an electrician in there tomorrow for a bid on a 200 amp service and replacing whatever cloth is still live, and get the roofer's 21k in writing on letterhead. Then take both to the seller as one number.

I have done this on thin margins more than once. You do not ask for a credit, you ask for a price reduction equal to the two bids, and you say the carrier declined in writing. A decline letter is the strongest piece of paper in a negotiation like this because it tells the seller his next buyer hits the same wall. If he replaces the roof himself before closing you get the worst version, cheapest crew, no tear-off, no ice barrier.

Expect to land somewhere between half and all of the bids. Half still fixes your model.

Out where I buy there are maybe three carriers who will touch a 1978 triplex at all, and the third one always takes two weeks to answer.

The third unit changing the carrier's appetite matches what I ran into. My duplex insures like a house. My triplex went to a different form entirely, higher premium per unit, and the broker had to shop it rather than click a button.

On your actual question, I have seen a roof replacement move a premium meaningfully and I have also seen it move almost nothing because the wiring was the real objection. The only way to know is to have your broker requote with a new roof assumed, which takes a day and costs nothing. Do that before you decide what to ask the seller for.

One more line for your model. With actual cash value on the roof you are effectively self-insuring it, so a 5,000 deductible and an ACV roof together mean small claims are yours and hail damage is mostly yours. I now carry 1,500 a unit a year for insurance in my underwriting on anything three units and older than 1980, and I have stopped being surprised.

Flint's decline letter point is right. That piece of paper is worth more than the roofer's bid.