Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Some buyers will subtract the price of removing the solar from their offer.
I did. Leased systems can run 50k to walk away deputy on the time/cost attrition.
If it was a true PAID fir system depending on age, the capacity and brand I would look at its residual cost. But I walked away from a few houses simply because of the solar system leases.
I have heard some solar installs are done on a financing 'lease type' plan that carries over to the new home owner until it is paid off
I personally think solar is a bad thing when selling a house.
Not to mention if roof mounted the risk of leaks etc in all the mounting bracket penetrations
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill the Butcher
Thanks for the input.
I am a little shocked to hear how many folks are against solar on a house. It is becoming very popular around these parts of Califronia. But I'd say Pheonix, Vegas and probably the Central Valley of California are the top three markets for solar in that order. The thing is, about 70% of the houses around here with solar have leased solar mounted to the house ( i'm not into the lease solar thing at all). I guess that makes it harder for appraisers and real esate agents to get a true value of what it adds to a house.
Personally I am fine with pannels on a house. You put the majority of them on the back of the house and if you have to a few on the front in key locations. But there are SOO many houses with pannels now that I don't think it is being considered an eye sore for many around here.
As for the power companies paying crazy high prices for the electricity, i think you are reffering to the net metering process. Yeah, I'm sure there will be some sort of changes with that eventually. At the same time though, when has a power company not risen their rates on the home owner? Seems every year they are going up.
At any rate, unless i can talk with an appraiser or real estate professional that can give me an accurate estimate or guess on what the value added would be and they can show some proff, I just don't think it will be worth it given our situation.
I wrote a nice section in solar system leases if you wanna do a search. It will really open your eyes on solar system leases. There are a ton of ways to lower your electrical bill without solar
Our housekeeper and her family own a 30 acre property on top of a mountain 6 1/2 miles out of town. Just running power to their home would have cost them over $30,000 so they went clear off of the grid. They have solar panels, with storage batteries and auxiliary diesel generator back up. After 10 years they just replaced the batteries. $35,000 to do so. That is more than our 3,700 sq. ft. with air conditioning and gas heating cost over the last 10 years, and we did not have to spend many thousands to install it in the first place. We did not have to pay for diesel, and maintenance on their system. Just flip a switch and we have power.
And as a long time Realtor, I can tell you that solar systems on a home, make it hard to sell, and the price will normally go down not up compared to similar homes in the same area.
Yep. My electric bill is typically around $50 month, but my neighbor is around $400 month. Different people, family size, and just plain wasting........ use different amounts of electricity. The bill is based upon use. A single guy who is never home, his usage will be much , much lower than a family with 5 teenagers and solar will mean less to him.
Okay, why is a single guy going to buy a four bed three bath house? Someone with solar who has a family and owns a four bed three bath house is losing out on that potential sell to the single guy who doesn't want solar? He doesn't want the house period! Or at least he shouldn't. There will be plenty more families looking for the house than single guys.
And as a long time Realtor, I can tell you that solar systems on a home, make it hard to sell, and the price will normally go down not up compared to similar homes in the same area.
Thank you for the input. Is this lease or paid for solar? Or does it not matter. Again, I've never been for leases solar. At best you save $50 a month it seems and then you end up with a headache at the end when trying to sell. Not worth it.
This is the kind of thing that scares me about purchasing solar. On our future forever home, sure we will do it if it makes sense (already has a new roof). Our current house has a roof less than 10 years old so it would be an okay candidate i think for solar. But if the solar sales guy is telling me it will increase the purchase price by x amount but then realtors are telling me otherwise, that is a big problem. I don't think the solar guys are necessarily wrong, but the fact that their is huge confusion and uncertainity in the matter scares me off from a purchase if I am only going to be there another 4-5 years potentially.
To set the record straight on an earlier criticism, the whole business with batteries is a red herring. Utility companies not only aren't going to require you to use batteries, they are likely to forbid you to use batteries, because they need to plug your panels into the grid in order to buy electricity from you. If you're "off grid" that is a totally different scenario with many, many more costs and limitations (mostly due to batteries being huge and inefficient) - and that's not what your typical residential Solar PV customer is looking for.
You do need to make sure that your local utility will buy your generated power, but in places like CA they usually will not only buy it, they'll subsidize the installation cost (alongside the Federal credit).
There are good installs and bad installs and a lot depends on the details. We have a large system but the way our house is, it's pretty much invisible, so there's no cosmetic drawback. Our incentives were good but not as good as an 80% offset in CA, so we're looking at an 8-9 year payoff -- also because our average cost per kWh in Texas is 12 cents versus double or nearly triple that in CA.
In your case, I wouldn't do it if you are likely to leave within 5 years. It's not a cost you'll recoup on a sale.
I honestly don't know how it affects the price when you sell.
Personally, I would not buy a house with leased panels and I don't want a house with panels on the roof. I wouldn't mind having some solar electricity if it is set up away from the roof. I don't think I'd be willing to pay too much of a premium for it. Maybe a little higher. But it is not like my electric bills runs very high, so the savings from solar aren't all that substantial. I'll take the feel good factor if I don't have to pay excessively for it.
Okay, why is a single guy going to buy a four bed three bath house? Someone with solar who has a family and owns a four bed three bath house is losing out on that potential sell to the single guy who doesn't want solar? He doesn't want the house period! Or at least he shouldn't. There will be plenty more families looking for the house than single guys.
People buy houses for all kinds of reasons. He might just want it as a holding place for money to minimize tax burden. Not really your concern who buys it or why.
I certainly didn't really consider resale value or adding any value to my house when we put in our purchased solar system, (even as the solar companies stated as much) but I did consider several other factors beyond (obviously) the financial implications. We have at once the highest electricity rates in the nation and also about the best net metering program (full retail offset buyback, with a 20 year fixed guarantee), and it's pretty darn sunny here so configuring a system with about a 5 year payback on the investment is not that difficult.
I also wanted to make sure that the panels didn't detract from the look of our house. On some well designed installations on more contemporary houses the PV arrays don't look half bad but we have a beautiful 90 y.o. Spanish Revival home, the subject of several paintings, (none of which we commissioned), and a visible haphazard bunch of solar panels on the variegated tile roof was not going to cut it. Fortunately most of our roof is actually flat behind parapets and partial elements of tiled shed and gable roofs. It was actually rather easy to hide everything- you can't see a thing from the street or the back, only well across the raised street on 3rd floor balconies can you ever notice our panels. We have a perfect true south orientation, and are able to angle the panels up a good bit for better efficiency. Maintenance is basically nothing. Even in dry San Diego a wash every four months without rain means about once a year you get up on the (flat) roof and hose things down.
We just got our first year bill, the system was designed to effectively offset ~100% of usage over the year (anything above that puts you in the wholesale buyback and doesn't make much economic sense) and we generated 1000 kWh more than we consumed. So, that just means we are good for the 9% production deterioration over 20 years, or we can buy and operate a room air conditioner the dozen or so days that we might need one here in coastal Southern California.
If you can't see the solar panels, they effectively add no maintenance, and they save you $1,500 a year (going up rapidly every year) it sure as hell isn't going to hurt the value of our house should we ever sell it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
