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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile in CA. I'm building a home and pretty much locked into a specific bank for this stupid deal. Yesterday I called my banker and said: "I'm spending about $9K to get hooked up to PG&E, can I redirect that money to make this a 100% off grid solar house"?

The answer was NO and it's all tied to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, bla bla bla and I hope in the future it changes.

He was also refusing to allow me to put Solar anywhere that the appraiser sees.

The laws right now are designed to burn California down (and make people homeless but that's a completely separate thing)

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While I disagree with the appraisal portion, not hooking up to the grid is understandable. While you may be prepared and willing to live off-grid, future home owners may see that as a downside (perceived/actual unreliability, maintenance costs, requirement of specialized knowledge), so it would make sense that it would effect your home price (hence the conditions of your mortage).

Huh? I was under the impression that, since 2020, solar is mandatory on new residential buildings under 3 stories in California. Is that not the case?

http://www.calsolarinc.com/solar-requirements-for-commercial...

I've seen a few single family homes go up quick and finish in empty lots in my neighborhood in CA this summer and none have had solar panels. Not sure how much teeth this law has or if other issues preclude it like if these homes I saw were permitted earlier and grandfathered in.

On my block they actually demolished a rooftop solar and rebuilt the house twice as large, all natural gas heating and appliances. This is in Berkeley, and it's possible because all of the energy efficiency requirements at local and state level exempt reconstruction, as long as you keep I guess 1 board from the old structure it works.

I see a lot of that sort of development too. Old rotting 2br bungalow converted to a three story home that consumes almost all available space on the lot and looks like a modern refrigerator. I'm not sure why that is allowed but a three story apartment complex of the same exact dimensions is illegal.

Is this a bank issue? If you were paying out of pocket it sounds like you could do what you want.

I can't afford it. :(

But finance is all but entirely necessary when the government both provides cheap loans and encourages currency debasement.

With inflation it's almost irresponsible to purchase a home outright when a conforming loan will essentially supercharge the growth rate of the home as an asset.

I originally paid extra on my mortgage. A few years later, and my mortgage (which wasn't even conforming) costs less than rent for a three bed apartment. I see now that there are better places to put the extra cash.

All of these programs are nudging strategies that don't really affect the wealthy in society. Meanwhile I pretty much have to get a loan for school and housing.

Worst case scenario: what would happen if you went ahead anyway?

Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

There are cases where this isn't true, and this is one of those cases.

City or County denies occupancy certificate due to no electric connection and he's on the hook for all the mortgage, plus liable for the bank's losses because the house is un-sellable plus he has to find somewhere else to live until it is corrected.

The county itself is OK with that as long as I would have the power source permitted. It's the bank in my case.

He wouldn’t have a mortgage (at least not though Freddie Mac / Fannie Mae)

The laws in California are built on the idea that you can centrally plan a functioning society.

You can’t.

It’s frustrating that we have to KEEP learning this over and over and over.

No? What does some bank construction loan oversight have to do with “central planning”?

The regulations come from Fannie and Freddie as the poster said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae

The other concern is that a centrally planned regulation about being connected to grid power prevents them from doing solar.

These are both regulations made FAR from where the OP is building their house, and OP is simply caught in the regulations as an edge case. But because these things are centrally planned there is no recourse.

Neither of those is a "regulation" at all. Fannie won't buy mortgages on off-the-grid properties, because they are a weird and frankly pointless niche and a vanishingly small slice of the housing market that nobody cares about. To build one on credit you need a portfolio loan from a cooperative lender. Obviously, if you try to get a construction loan that the lender thinks can be resold as a traditional mortgage, but then try to build a non-traditional building with the money, there's going to get differences between you and your lender.

> centrally planned regulation about being connected to grid power prevents them from doing solar.

This is not correct at all. Solar is not only possible for grid connected new construction in CA, it’s required.

The only restriction here is the federal one that requires his new construction home to be grid tied if Fannie Mae is going to loan him $$ for it.

Given the potential negative impact on home value of a non-grid-tied home, that’s probably reasonable.

Holy crap this is going to be so far from the truth going forward in this area. PG&E will, for the rest of time, have wind based power outages that last multiple days (about 20 days in 2020).

This is truly a terrible restriction based on idiots that can't comprehend we have solutions to the problems in California and Texas.

The other thing PG&E is pushing for is 100% electric appliances - this only benefits the utility, at this point is going to get $600 per month per household in the winter. It's pretty obvious who's writing these grid tie restrictions.

The laws in CA are anything but centrally planned. In my city local councilmembers decide what is de facto law unilaterally in their district. What I would give for sacramento to take the reigns and remove local politicians from zoning and transit decision making.

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