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.