Solar Panels - Selling The House

ptrichardson

ajb69 wrote: »

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

As I've given it more thought, that's the exact same conclusion as I've been coming to.


We've decided not to proceed with the other project as when we got honest about the full costs, it is just a little bit too much debt than I want to be in.

ptrichardson

theartfullodger wrote: »

Thank you for your kind thoughts:

As I said ...Since we the taxpayers are subsidising these ugly, hideous & uneconomic carbuncles, anything that gets them removed and saves us money is good news in my book.

I am trying to save our poor, economically challenged, country money by doing all I can to stop these daft subsidised failures being used... What could be more important than that???

Cheers!!

Now that the thread is over, I can respond to your completely off topic, wildly incorrect and unnecessary post.


Oh, I just did.

poppysarah

ptrichardson wrote: »

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.

You want to buy something from your parents so they make a loss?

And rely on a friend doing work until the finds another building job? And will he expect some money from you when you decide in 2 years that you've found another project to go and do?


Is the project being sold mortagable? Habitable?

Can you do it without selling this house?

Knowing in the current market that what you think might be worth 85k might only sell for 75 or even less.

ptrichardson

poppysarah wrote: »

You want to buy something from your parents so they make a loss?

And rely on a friend doing work until the finds another building job? And will he expect some money from you when you decide in 2 years that you've found another project to go and do?


Is the project being sold mortagable? Habitable?

Can you do it without selling this house?

Knowing in the current market that what you think might be worth 85k might only sell for 75 or even less.

Like I said in the beginning, the actual story is complex and would take hours to explain. So I said I wasn't going to & I didn't want, need or ask for any advise on the "project" side of things.

It was a "stars are lining up" moment.

tunnel

Petree wrote: »

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.
QUOTE]

Just catching up on this thread and read this,do you really have a clue what your talking about. A landlord can enter the premises for inspections say twice yearly,at which point they can jot down the meter readings(they don't have to be submitted quarterly)Refusing inspections for the LL would most certainly get you issued with S21. As for tapping in to all that "free winter solar",what do you think the panels are doing up there...baking cakes?,they're already wired into the house to use the generated leccy. Geez,do a bit of research before you post such nonesense.

Mallotum_X

Think of it in the same way as putting in an expensive kitchen.

say you but a 10k kitchen into an 85k house you wouldnt get a 10k premium. These appear to be just the same. I wouldnt pay a premium on a house for one, and there is no guarantee that they will keep paying out - it really wont be hard for the "guarantee" that exists to be cut.

Your options are:

Stay in the house and earn the income
rent out the house and keep the income
Sell at the price the market will pay (and hope you don't end up getting less due to the panels - a very real posibility)
Take the panels and don't get the higher income.

ptrichardson

Mallotum_X wrote: »

Think of it in the same way as putting in an expensive kitchen.

say you but a 10k kitchen into an 85k house you wouldnt get a 10k premium. These appear to be just the same. I wouldnt pay a premium on a house for one, and there is no guarantee that they will keep paying out - it really wont be hard for the "guarantee" that exists to be cut.

Your options are:

Stay in the house and earn the income
rent out the house and keep the income
Sell at the price the market will pay (and hope you don't end up getting less due to the panels - a very real posibility)
Take the panels and don't get the higher income.

What kitchen do you know that prints money every year :rotfl:


I can't imagine anyone would value the house less for having a £1500 per year cashback scheme on the roof.

I might not get anymore, as the house is maximised in other ways to the point that it would be marketed at the very peak of local area's prices (i.e. the full top to bottom refurb that I did 18 months ago). But panels lowering the price. No.

If they were rented roof space, then maybe. MAYBE. But not outright owned.

ptrichardson

tunnel wrote: »

Petree wrote: »

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.

Just catching up on this thread and read this,do you really have a clue what your talking about. A landlord can enter the premises for inspections say twice yearly,at which point they can jot down the meter readings(they don't have to be submitted quarterly)Refusing inspections for the LL would most certainly get you issued with S21. As for tapping in to all that "free winter solar",what do you think the panels are doing up there...baking cakes?,they're already wired into the house to use the generated leccy. Geez,do a bit of research before you post such nonesense.

Huge amount of blinkered nonsense on here. There's obviously an agenda against solar panels for whatever reason, and people are using it to spout utter nonsense in every direction.


Decided not to move anyway, so its all purely theoretical.

Mallotum_X

ptrichardson wrote: »

What kitchen do you know that prints money every year :rotfl:


I can't imagine anyone would value the house less for having a £1500 per year cashback scheme on the roof.

I might not get anymore, as the house is maximised in other ways to the point that it would be marketed at the very peak of local area's prices (i.e. the full top to bottom refurb that I did 18 months ago). But panels lowering the price. No.

If they were rented roof space, then maybe. MAYBE. But not outright owned.

I think you need to wake up, a lot of people hate panels, so it will lower the number of people who will look at your house. That in turn could get you a lower price. You have already said you wont get your money back so you recognise that they are not quite such a gem as you may have thought when you bought them.

The point is just because you think they are great, not everyone will agree and so you may not get any of your money back.

Panels are newish technology, they can break, repairs and replacements can be costly. Other repairs to the roof would need them to be removed first - that's will added cost. They are ugly and there is no guarantee they will keep earning for the lifetime you expected. All of these things will be going through purchasers minds.

Anything that can put people off a property will potentially lower the property value. At 85k you are already in the cheaper end of the market, a potential purchaser wont have the cash to pay extra. If they did they would probably look for a nicer location instead.

Sorry but just because you want your investment to have been a good one doesn't make it so.

Better_Days

We looked at a house last year which had solar panels. When I asked why they weren't on the details the vendor explained that they didn't work. Apparently the company that installed them had gone bust and the stuff that circulates in the panels (no idea what it was) is no longer made. So basically they were just useless panels on the roof, and it was uneconomic to remove them.

I can see why some people like solar panels, especially under the old FiT, but I can also understand why they are viewed as being so ugly, and that maintenance has to be considered. As Mallotum X comments, clearly a divisive issue which would seem to reduce the number of people who will be interested in the property.