Solar Panels - Selling The House

theartfullodger

Hello Sinbad!!!!

sinbad182 wrote: »

Damn right you're not hardworking - any of your tenants in any of your falling down, state of disrepair properties you rip them off to live in will testify to that.

Thank you for your kind words & thoughts...

Do you hold these views of me from a generic, Proudhonian anti-landlord stance, or due to some specific act I have perpetrated or position I have taken, or the particular state of any specific property I rent out??

Do tell, either in this thread or by PM. I look forward to your valuable & insightful input.


Cheers!!!

Alwilb

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

You make them enforceable against successors in title by either registering a restriction on the title which prevents dispositions unless you consent (and you only consent if successors enter into a deed of covenant to abide by the terms of your agreement) or you sell your freehold with an agreement to create lease of the airspace back to yourself. And successors in title to the freehold would have to then buy subject to that lease.

Either way you hamstring your buyer. Chances are they'll only agree to either of these in exchange for a purchase price reduction.

That's the downside. The upside is they get free electricity. Personally, I wouldn't buy a house subject to either of these positions.

You're entirely correct when you say that enforcing the terms of your contract/lease may need further legal input. To prevent your contract/lease from being breached in the first place you make it so breach allows you to round up the payments and charge them a lump sum meaning breaching is the last thing they want to do. You just need to make sure this isn't worded as a penalty clause as you can't enforce penalty clauses under English law.

It's all very complicated if you don't have experience of these things.

theartfullodger

ptrichardson wrote: »

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


Oh, I just did.

Many thanks, cheers!!

Yes, the thread is over, clearly....

Johnandabby

Mallotum_X wrote: »

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.

While there will be some people who don't like the appearance of panels, there are many other people who do. So many factors in house buying - does the kitchen/bathroom need replacing, is there a flat roof, does the windows need replacing, does the roof need replacing etc - presence/absence of PVs just becomes one of many factors to consider.

If there are two identical houses, but one with PVs providing an annual income of £1,500 tax free, then I would have thought most people would see this as a postive thing. PV panels are very robust and are unlikely to break within 25 years. The point about having to remove the panels to replace the roof is true - but the cost of replacing the roof is going to be significantly more than the cost of moving the panels, and this cost would be repaid fully by the FITs.

But I don't know why I bother writing this, it obviously won't convince the panel haters

Johnandabby

Better_Days wrote: »

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.

It's a standard fluid in solar thermal systems - sounds more like the vendor didn't want to sort it out. If they are installed properly you shouldn't have to replace the circulating fluid anyway.

Unfortunately a low of cowboy installers got involved and gave the systems a bad name in some people's view. Always difficult to change people's minds when they've had a bad experience.

JQ.

Has anyone had a house valued by a mortgage co. that has panels on it? It would be interesting to know how valuers treat them.