That sounds a lot for just a pre-wire. Our house is 6000+; it may be close to 7000 now since we've been pushing walls here and there. Our pre-wire is less than $5000 (can't remember the exact number). Our GC said that the cost of the security system would mainly be equipment cost.

Generally security should cost a lot more to install than the equipment cost. I have a pretty high end security module at $500 or so and a crappy system from my builder (his cost) was $2500 installed. So the vast majority is labor and markup. I suppose if you had a really simple security system then labor could be less. But if you are wiring every door and every window, that costs some money ... and not in parts.

LV wiring is a crazy profit item. It is considered luxury and so it is billed as such. Yeah $15k is absurd.

That sounds high. Including the basement, our house is probably 1000 square feet bigger than yours. Not including the basement, quite a bit smaller. . . We didn't put speakers everywhere (really very few places because I don't like the swiss cheese look - and I opted for bookshelf speakers in the den to keep the clean ceiling), but all is wired to a central electronics closet. We also have 3 levels of a security system. We were about half that, or less, for the wiring. All doors are wired, and accessible windows (basically the basement - the rest are not accessible) are wired. We have speakers in the kitchen and breakfast room, den, screened porch, outside patio, master bath, basement rec room, surround sound speakers in the basement media room, speakers on upper and lower patios and wired for speaker output to outside (i.e., we have wires outside we can connect to landscape speakers down the road if we want to).

Not sure of the totals but we were more like 6k for all that, security and low voltage (speakers, phone, ethernet, etc.). . .

Just so you know, the wiring is the cheap part. If he wants 15k for wiring, I would think you are looking at a 6 figure system . . .

Also, we are probably doing control 4. We didn't want or need cameras (gated community). We also didn't want or need controls on the walls . . . We did put them in the master bath. I have a Squeezebox duet now that gets every radio station known to man and my husband likes to listen to internet radio in the morning so we decided it would be helpful to push the button and turn it on in there without a phone or ipad. His closet is off the master bath also so he gets ready in there exclusively. The only other place we did the physical wall controls is the basement. The other places we figured we would have iphones ready (husband is on call constantly so he is glued to his plus we have a charging drawer in the kitchen where the rest will reside).

I can't remember the charge per control but this affected the price a bit.