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Comment by up_and_up | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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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