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m3mnoch

this argument kind of annoys me.

"yeah, but how long before you see a return on investment?"

how about instantly?

this is what we did:

1) calculated our monthly electricity payment: $160 or so a month.

2) priced out solar to push our payment to net-zero-ish: the savings really start multiplying once you get down into the regulated tiers.

3) replaced our electricity bill with a solar installation loan.

what did we get in return?

instant insulation from rate hikes: http://business.time.com/2011/12/16/plugged-in-then-pay-up-e...

instant equity on our house.

oh, and look! i can now have a solar-powered car!

but yeah, if i happen to still live in this house in 15 years, sure, no electricity bill. and, i'm sure somewhere along the line i'll end up "making all my money back".

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Re: Equity

Solar leases bring down the resale value of a home. If the equipment is owned it raises the resale value of a home.

I've sold 2 homes this year with solar leases. Both of them were great deals for the buyers netting basically the value of the lease off the full retail value of the home.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/real-estate/2015/07/17/...

As solar prices go down, surely the added house equity goes down with it?

But what happens when you no longer get free power under net zero agreements (which is going to happen), and the cost of the system drops, reducing the value further of the already depreciating asset?

They will continue to save money on his monthly power bill, to a lesser extent. They will still have the warm fuzzy feeling that their existence is putting less of a drain on the planet's resources than they otherwise would have. And they may have captured a great deal of surplus value, possibly even enough to pay for the system before these changes are implemented.

In the past 25 years, electricity rates in CA have seen a 3-4x increase. If this continues, then even as some of the advantages drop away, the comparison function (monthly electric bill) will also increase, likely offsetting a lot of lost value.

> instant equity on our house.

Depends. Solar doesnt necessarily add value. Depends on the appraisal. I only know because I tried to buy a home with solar panels. The homeowner had raised the price of the home to include his investment in the panels but the appraiser wouldnt include the panels in the appraisal.

This is true, because the job of the appraiser is to estimate market value. If buyers will not pay a premium, they have no resale value. But in my experience buying a home in SFBA with solar, and getting it appraised for refi, it counted both times. (In the cost approach it was valued at $20k in 2013 and $10k this year)

Appraisals are not strictly tied to price of homes. Only the value for the loan. That's not to say you're not going to associate the two together (if you're buying a house with a loan), but the $30k one way or the other isn't a huge percentage of a 30 year loan.

Depends on where you buy. A 200K home in the midwest, 30K is a big percentage. The assumption being made here is that investing in solar automatically raises the value of the home. I am saying not necessarily. The example above was an appraisal in Madison WI, which, though in the midwest, definitely has plenty of solar installs.

Appraisals are supposed to be strictly tied to the price of homes. The appraisal shows how much the property would probably sell for on the open market today. The loan amount doesn't even show up on the report.

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