Buying a house with leased roof solar panels

spaceduck

We are first time buyers that have had an offer accepted on a house we like. On viewing the agent told us the solar panels on the roof was owned outright, but now we have learnt that the roof is leased for the panels and handled by a company called A Shade Greener (ASG). It looks to be a 25 year lease with 16 years remaining from looking at the title.

Our mortgage advisor says that the lender (Halifax) should be OK with the panels and that we should go ahead and look at the basic valuation and a homebuyer survey afterwards.

From searching online, we've seen reviews about ASG taking a long time to remove panels (£1000 refundable charge) unless you pay a non refundable £1000, and have to supply scaffolding and tiles if you ever had to carry on maintenance on the roof. There is also the worry that this will cause issues if we ever want to sell the house in the future.

We are trying to understand the impact of the panels as much as possible before proceeding any further, and considering asking the vendor to buy the panels outright (which may not be possible with ASG?) or reducing the offer to offset any risk (by an amount we are not sure yet?).

The vendors seemed very happy with the panels and the savings they have gained from it, but we are more concerned with future costs/maintenance, future sale issues and home insurance/damage issues arising from the panels.

Any advice or pointers on things to read would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

hazyjo

I've seen them mentioned several times on here before. If the search facility is working, it may be worth reading previous posts to see if any of the info is helpful.

Getting_greyer

I'm pretty sure they will be thousands of people who have bought and sold with no significant drama with these.

spaceduck

hazyjo said:

I've seen them mentioned several times on here before. If the search facility is working, it may be worth reading previous posts to see if any of the info is helpful.

Thanks @hazyjo, yeah there are definitely some previous posts around this subject. I've been trying to find every post I can on here around leasing, panels and ASG - I've seen some people saying it's possible to buy out the contract and some saying otherwise. Starting to feel like this is a bit of a headache / hassle with the panels and starting to consider pulling out of buying the property.

I think the next best step may be to see if there is a buyout clause in the contract and go from there.

teachfast

Previous answers here have indicated that buy out is £1k per year remaining and they may be difficult about facilitating it. 

buglydb

Interestingly we have just pulled out of a purchase this morning because of solar panel issues and foundation problems. 

Our surveyor was not happy with the number of panels on the roof and the panel company could not provide any reasonable evidence that the roof could take the load. It was recommended we get a detailed roof survey. The combination of the two issues was just two much. 

Our surveyor was very sceptical about the panels and even wrote that the house was unmortgageable with them. However, our mortgage advisor (CoOp) didn’t seem
to have an issue with them. 

I’d suggest you make sure you get all the documentation for the panels up front before you spend too much money on surveys and searches. 

Jaybee_16

When looking at properties last year I was surprised that vendors didn't seem to be aware of the details concerning solar panels. Maybe they didn't want to say.
One probate sale, the family had no paperwork and couldn't tell me who owned the panels. EA didn't know nor care.
Another told me they thought the panels were leased but didn't know the length of contract or what happens when the contract ends. 'We pay £100 a month by direct debit and the company gives us some money back'
Bought a property without panels.