Selling house with free solar panels

D00gie72

Hi there - as a newbie I'm not sure if this has come up before on here. We are trying to move house - we had accepted an offer on our property back in May - now last week our buyer pulled out as she was daunted by the "complications" in our contract for free solar panels that we have.
We had already gone to the owner of the panels and got them to update our lease to be CML compliant - but that wasn't good enough for the buyer. So now we are back at square one trying to find a new buyer - but we obviously don't want our panels loosing us another sale. Has anyone got any advice for selling a perfectly decent property that has a contract with free solar panels? Does anyone know if I can request for the panels to be removed - thus removing the problem all together?
Any advice would be appreciated - our property is a bungalow so is likely to appeal to older buyers.

eddddy

You have probably signed a lease agreement, whereby you have agreed to lease the area on your roof to the solar panel company.

You need to read the lease. It may quote a figure or formula for 'buying back' or terminating the lease. If it doesn't, you could contact the company and ask them how much they would want from you to buy back the lease - and try to get their offer in writing.

Let's say buying back the lease costs £10k... you can then tell prospective buyers that they can either keep the solar panels and get the free electricity deal (presumably), or pay £10k to have them removed.

But you might find that you have to drop the selling price by £10k to compensate.

rpc

Personally, I probably wouldn't buy one of these.

You have limited your rights to the roof and you have no control over the solar panels because they belong to someone else.

I'd expect any cancellation clause to be quite hefty because of the FIT that will be due for many years to come.

DTDfanBoy

I would also view it as a negative. Some of the terms of those leases are absolutely shocking, just trying to reroof your house can easily turn into a very expensive exercise.

I'd probably pay a premium for a house whose owner was smart enough to install their own panels, especially if they were tied into the initial tariff rates.

Mr_Moo_2

Worth a read -

http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/advice/articles/the-pitfalls-of-solar-panels/

Basically backs up what is being said above ^^^^^

Smith_007

I must admit, we avoided buying a house with "free" solar panels due to the potential agro involved...... Both with the mortgage company, and also due to the fact that you no longer own your own roof (it is leased out to the solar panel company)

For us it was far easier to buy a similar property without them. (The irony being, we're now paying for our own solar installation, owned entirely by us!)

As others have said, if we did go for a property with "free" solar panels we would have used this as a bargaining tool to put in a low offer.

D00gie72

Hi there - and thanks for replies so far. Sadly I had suspected as much. I don't have a "calculator" in my lease to work out how much it would cost me to buy out of the lease. I will have to contact them to find out if that's an option. Through this whole thing the solar panel company have been really helpful (Ecovision) but I suspect they would soon change their tune if they thought we wanted out of the lease.
Hindsight is a marvelous thing - but when we got these panels we never thought we'd ever be moving house so we hadn't fully considered the implications - good life lesson there but that doesn't help me now!
In the meantime will keep my fingers crossed that any prospective buyer will be happy to take on the lease for the sake of getting free electricity!

theartfullodger

These ugly, inefficient and uneconomic solar panels are not free.

They cost us taxpayers a ruddy fortune. Why won't Dave change the subsidies to reduce this daft waste & blight.

Cheers!

D00gie72

Is there anyone out there who has successfully sold a house with these leased solar panels??!

DTDfanBoy

I'm sure that there is, loads of people thought it was a great idea to lease their roof for a very small return, you just have to hope you find a buyer who likes the idea and isn't too put of by what their solicitor tells them.

Who did you actually lease the roof to ??

Some contracts aren't as bad as others, but some of the worst ones may make it very hard to shift your house.

DKLS

I have pulled out of two potential houses that have had panels fitted, now I wont view a house if they have them fitted unless they accept an offer that takes into account the costs of removal and paying off the parasites.