Hear me out.

3 unit 1930s rental building in lower blue collar neighborhood, clean but small houses. It used to be a family store. The lower property taxes make it worth staying, and at the prices of real estate now I don't know if I could afford to move anyway.

I would like to add security cameras to the front, but its a two story building and has like a metal lathe/stucco exterior.

The cameras I assume have to be high enough to be out of reach of ner-do-wells, and need to tap a power source.

The upstairs floor is rented by difficult tenants and even getting in there is an ordeal. Drilling through the stucco on the second floor from the outside to reach an electrical tap would be tough to reach, dangerous, and a pain to deal with the tenants. I might also have to hire an electrician to do it.

Downstairs there are two efficiency apartments.

One of them is coming up vacant at the end of this month. So I'll have complete access to that while I'm laboring on it.

How realistic would it be to route power through the wall of the downstairs unit that is vacant, put a bend and then run a galvanized pipe conduit up the side of the building, and have the security camera at the end of that, mounted outside the building?

Would this look ridiculous, or unprofessional, or pose any risks. It would be so much easier. With galvanized pipe they couldn't cut the cord either.

Is your interior wall plaster on brick? Or does it have room to run the power line.

+1 for POE. You still have to run conduit and cat5 cable, but you wouldn't have to worry about sourcing the cameras themselves, as they would receive power from the (Power Over Ethernet) switch.

Having tenants that won't let you in creates more of a problem in my eyes.

Explain why you are doing this and maybe they change their ways. Otherwise I would be getting rid of them. You own the place. It's not like you are constantly disturbing them.

But I agree that POE is the best route, as long as you can run the Cat5.

You could start out with battery only cams. They will die faster in the winter tho.

While you are working on the best solution why not get a doorbell camera? One that runs off the doorbell electricity. Make it a gift to the downstairs tenant with the caveat that you have access to the camera feed as well.

Sometimes just seeing the camera makes people think differently. Not always tho. My son had one on his front door. Kids were walking by, saw it and ran up to lick it.

+2 POE

Would your difficult tenant be willing to put up with a bit of construction in order to get security cameras on the outside? Security cameras are pretty desirable