Solar Panels - Selling The House

ptrichardson

Petree wrote: »

I would expect you to pay me to have something attached to my house which I have no control over and don't benefit from especially when I know you're making money off of it.

I also have a stranger demanding access to my house every so often to fiddle about with electrics, putting equipment which could set fire in my house or I could accidentally break when shoving my broom in there, or do I have a cupboard in my own house I don't have a key for?

If renting then I think you would have great difficulty and would need to discount the rent unless its going to a friend who doesn't mind you entering the property whenever you need to. What stops me wiring the panels into my house supply and using all that free winter solar to electrically heat my house all day and not have any heating bills? Remember you won't be allowed in whenever you like as you won't have access rights to my rented house.

Realistically I say you will need to suck up a loss of this investment and move on, if its your dream/special project the hurt won't last for too long.

Surely this is a massive bag of personal preference?

Remember, thousands of people have asked for these free panels just for the free electricity.

They didn't charge these companies money to put them up, they asked nicely to be allowed to.

As for access, a quartly check on a rented house is perfectly reasonable, with a quick check on the meter.
If I was renting, I'd be well chuffed with some free lecky.

People are insinuating I've put poison on the roof, rather than some solar panels that produce free electricity for the occupant.


They cost ten grand!

ptrichardson

Morgage_Confused wrote: »

Now Im really interested in the other project, the unique and intriguing new project.
Come on give us something more.

Now that I've got a useful thread elsewhere....

My parents bought a dis-used church, in an amazing location with out of this world views in a small village near where I live.

They've had all the plans drawn up and they've already received planning permission to convert the property including the change of use to residential.
However, due to a change in their situation, they may no longer go ahead with the project and they've had the land on the market for a few months now.
He's tentatively accepted an offer that is waaaaaaaay less than the true value. Quite a bit less than he paid for the land, nevermind the costs involved in planning and all of the time and effort that has been put into clearing the site etc.

I couldn't afford to buy it and do the renovations - until a good friend of mine was made redundant from his building company in the last week or so, and has offered to significantly reduce the total project costs if I work with him - which I'm happy to do.

If I absolutely stretch myself to the max, I could do it.

The end product would be worth between 30-50% more than the total project cost. Not that selling would be anywhere near my mind. It would be my ideal home, as in beyond what I could ever have imagined.



At the same time, I'm a pragmatist, and if I'm going to lose my £10,000 solar PV investment, I'd try to mitigate that loss as much as possible. That is the reason I'm posting today - as you can see, the project above is completely irrelevant to this, but since so many people asked (read: got nosy:p )

That £10k could be the difference between having the family bathroom, or just managing with the en suite for the first year or two. That sort of thing, anyway.

theartfullodger

ptrichardson wrote: »

....

Remember, thousands of people have asked for these free panels just for the free electricity.
... ...

The panels aren't free: Someone paid for them (guess who??). The electricity isn't free: It is paid for through HUGE INDEFENSIBLE SUBSIDIES by, guess who, the hard-working taxpayers: (I make no claim to be hard-working, but I am a taxpayer...).

Not sure what planet you are on if you think they were free....

Cheers!

tim123456789

ptrichardson wrote: »

Wondering if there's a way around this...

I bought Solar Panels (outright) about 18 months ago. 3kW system, all paid for installed and running. Received well over £1000 last year from the energy company.

Now, an opportunity has come up to buy a really interesting property that is pretty much unique for reasons I won't go into here (please don't reference this in any replies, its a long story, and it really is unique). So I need to consider selling my house that I basically re-built only 2 years ago.


The house is worth around £85k, and the panels were £9k 18 months ago set at the max FiT rate (~43p /kwh).

Problem is, where I live, I can't imagine I'd get even a £5,000 premium on the house sale in respect of the panels.

I can't bring myself to walk away from that investment - so give away £25k of income for nothing and lose my £8k.

I'm afraid that this is the risk of installing the panals - one which people well warned about at the time

tim

vectistim

theartfullodger wrote: »

The panels aren't free: Someone paid for them (guess who??). The electricity isn't free: It is paid for through HUGE INDEFENSIBLE SUBSIDIES by, guess who, the hard-working taxpayers: (I make no claim to be hard-working, but I am a taxpayer...).

Not quite - FIT subsidies are paid for by a levy on bills, not from taxation.
The renewable heat subsidies come from taxation, the cynic would say this is the reason the heat subsidies have been delayed lots of times and are a lot less than the subsidies that don't come from taxation.

pimento

If I were buying a house, I'm another dinosaur who would run a mile from solar panels on the roof.

Johnandabby

pimento wrote: »

If I were buying a house, I'm another dinosaur who would run a mile from solar panels on the roof.

So if it was your perfect house in every other way, you would say no just because of the panels? Even if they are on the back of the house and barely visible? And even if they could provide an income of nearly £1,600 per year for the next 20 something years?

Everyone's entitled to their opinion about the aesthetics of the panels, but from a 'money saving' point of view (the clue is in the website title) inheritating a PV system on a good Feed-in tariff is an extremely good economic decision. Much better than any ISA or savings account at the moment

ptrichardson

Johnandabby wrote: »

So if it was your perfect house in every other way, you would say no just because of the panels? Even if they are on the back of the house and barely visible? And even if they could provide an income of nearly £1,600 per year for the next 20 something years?

Everyone's entitled to their opinion about the aesthetics of the panels, but from a 'money saving' point of view (the clue is in the website title) inheritating a PV system on a good Feed-in tariff is an extremely good economic decision. Much better than any ISA or savings account at the moment

Seems to be a hugely divisive issue. But while I can see their opinion, many opponents don't seem to even acknowledge the existence of any benefits. Which is, as you've pointed out, ironic, given the name of this website.

ajb69

Um, I am not a lawyer etcetera - and ignoring all the political points above - but conceptually I can't see any difference between this situation and one where you had the panels installed for free with the FiT payment going to the installing company. In practice, though, I'd be worried about a few potential snags.

Conceptually first; if you had installed the panel for free with the installer getting the FiT payments and then sold the house, the new buyer would presumably have to agree to give the FiT payments to the installing company, and agree access for maintenance / meter reading etc, so it's the same situation here but with you in the place of the installing company.

Having said that - buyers/their mortgage company may well already be more reluctant to buy in the "normal" situation, and this will apply to your situation even more so. Not only will you have to pay to draw up your own legal agreement, but the risk to the buyers is greater than normal because they are dealing with an unknown quantity - you! And while a mortgage company will perhaps have come across the large installers before and be familiar with their contracts, they will certainly never have come across yours and so may well be more reluctant to lend as the marginal cost to them of inspecting your one-off contract is high. I don't know.

However, the key thing that no-one has mentioned here that I can see is enforcement. What happens if the new owners refuse access to read meters or for maintenance? A large company no doubt has budgeted for a %age of defaulters and has a legal department to deal with these things. You don't and so presumably would have to go to solicitors/court to force compliance, which would not be cheap.

Here's a scenario - new owners purchase it, and then let it out. Tenants refuse access. You can't sue the tenants, I suspect, because you have no contract with them - so you'd need to sue the owners and then rely on them to sue/force the tenants. Expensive and no guarantee of success. And - I have no idea if this is easy or not - how simple is it to quantify your actual loss of income due to lack of access?

The above is all speculation based on absolutely no experience, but by the time you've spent 1k on a legal agreement, a few months longer on the market due to the extra complexity and also kept back a say 2k sinking fund for enforcement, you're pretty much losing a large chunk of the extra money you hope to gain anyway, surely?

Apologies if I have missed something, but I've always thought it's very easy to draw up a contract - but how easy is it to enforce compliance to the terms?

Drew

pimento

Johnandabby wrote: »

So if it was your perfect house in every other way, you would say no just because of the panels? Even if they are on the back of the house and barely visible? And even if they could provide an income of nearly £1,600 per year for the next 20 something years?

Everyone's entitled to their opinion about the aesthetics of the panels, but from a 'money saving' point of view (the clue is in the website title) inheritating a PV system on a good Feed-in tariff is an extremely good economic decision. Much better than any ISA or savings account at the moment

Yes. The panels are just ugly whichever way they face and they whole thing is too complicated and as the OP has shown, means that you lose out if you move.

I'd rather save money by being careful with the electricity I use rather than rent my roof out. I could probably cut the £90 a year off my electricity bill (that they purport to save you) by other means.

http://www.moneywise.co.uk/home-mortgage/improvements/six-things-to-consider-buying-solar-panels