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Reasons Not to Install Solar Power Panels on Sacramento Homes
Installing solar panels might not add value to your home but it might reduce your expenses.
There is a huge push lately by solar energy companies to install solar power panels on Sacramento homes. Everywhere, I see this. Mostly it’s leases but some owners actually buy their solar panels. One such seller paid a company $30,000 to install microinverter high efficiency energy solar panels. She financed it, of course, and now it needs to be paid in full from her proceeds of sale. The stinker is she won’t get any credit for those solar panels in the home appraisal. Appraisers don’t consider solar power panels on Sacramento homes an upgrade. Solar panels have no value.
No value, people. Of course, that’s not how the solar company sells it to homeowners. They don’t tell you the truth.
On top of this, you’ve got to stop and consider the savings. To recoup that $30,000, if your electric bill runs, say, $200 a month, it would take 12 1/2 years to break even. And that’s assuming there are no repairs to those solar panels over the next 12 1/2 years. No leaking or parts that need to be replaced. Which is probably unheard of.
My husband and I have solar panels on our vacation home in Hawaii. Two of them. About every five years, those tubes need to be replaced at the cost of $1,000 each. That means the solar panels, although paid for, cost us $400 a year. The only appliance run by the solar panels is our water heater. How many hot showers do you take in Hawaii? We wash our clothes mostly in cold water. I guess we pay $400 a year to run our dishwasher, and that seems fairly expensive.
Homeowners with solar panels on Sacramento homes probably do not realize the inherent problem in some neighborhoods lies with pigeons. The woman with the $30,000 solar panels discovered hundreds of pigeons had flocked to her home after the installation of the solar power panels. Pigeon eggs rolled into her gutters, and the gutters clogged. Pigeon feathers, pigeon poop and other disgusting pigeon debris, including dead pigeons, all over her roof and in her gutters. It cost her $2,000 to clean up the mess and install screens to keep the pigeons away.
The kicker in this story is the guy who installs the screens is the sole service provider authorized by the solar power company to perform such work. That’s wrong on so many levels. He told the seller he just follows the birds to the next victim’s home. The person who will make out like a bandit will be the buyer for this seller’s home. She has pigeon barriers installed and a fairly new $30K solar power system that will be absolutely free to the new owner. She pays zero to the electric company.
Other homeowners pay for leases, and they generally do not pay zero to the electric company. They pay a SMUD bill and a lease payment, often an above-market rate charged by SMUD, to the solar power company. They get away with charging more at present than it actually costs because the solar companies claim it’s long term and fixed. This is also why buyers tend to balk at buying homes with solar panel leases. I had one seller remove the solar panel from his home and take it with him, just so he could sell, because nobody wanted to assume his lease.
I’m not saying all solar power panels on Sacramento homes are a ripoff or a bad thing. But I’ve yet to see a homeowner benefit. I remember 10 years ago you could buy solar panels for $6,000 because we contemplated it. Of course, today those would probably be considered bad technology. This is too bad because we desperately need green solutions for our planet.
Solar Panels Might Not Add Value to Your Sacramento Home
Installing solar panels might not add value to your home.
Apart from all of the problems being caused by the PACE loans, those green home improvement loans, now we are being informed that solar panels don’t necessarily add value to your home. In other words, you can spend $10,000 to $30,000 installing solar panels in the hopes of increasing market value and the value an appraiser assigns won’t make a bit of difference. How can that be, you ask? I ask it, and I’m a Sacramento Realtor.
If you’re saving $250 a month in electrical costs, why doesn’t that equate to a value when you’re pocketing more than $3,000 a year? Not to mention the cost involved to buy and install solar panels to start with. Word has it through a reputable mortgage lending source that appraisers do not have to attribute any value to solar panels when appraising a home.
It’s up to the appraiser. And if you argue with an appraiser, well, in some ways, it’s like arguing with people on the Internet. You’re not gonna get anywhere, and you just might make the situation worse. The person to argue with about it is not the appraiser. The appraiser is just doing his or her job to the best of that individual’s ability, which means it’s either a good job, mediocre or bad, and you’re just stuck with it. Unless you can build your own case for the underwriter.
And you probably can. If you provide receipts, permits and copies of your actual invoices from the utility company, before and after the installation, you might be able to change the situation. But don’t necessarily count on it. And think twice before installing solar panels simply because you want to add value. Do it because you want to support green endeavors and reduce our reliance on utilities, maybe lower or erase your utility bill, but not because you want your home’s value to increase.
Bear in mind, of course, that if you sell your home and have a recorded PACE loan for a home improvement bundled in with your tax bill, that loan will need to be paid off, regardless of what you were promised by the sales folks who signed you up for it.
