Buying Housing Association Home with Solar Panels

kirstycobie

Hi,

Im in the middle of buying my HA home, it has solar panels on the roof, and i have only these options:
-rent the air space to council for a one off £400 (hard to get mortgage lender with this option)
or
-buy out remaining contract for £4735.

My issue is, i don’t want them, i just want them removed but im being told this is not an option, is there anyway to get out of this contract? apparently they have been on for 10 years and there’s another 15 years remaining, the pigeons live under them, causing lots of mess, the roof is going to have issues off this so potentially will need fixing, i would rather just get them took off and roof fixed instead of pigeon protection.

Any ideas?

Brie

Tell the vendor to get rid of them or the deal's off?

Keep_pedalling

Brie said:

Tell the vendor to get rid of them or the deal's off?

As the vendor is a HA I doubt they would be that worried about such a threat. 

Ownership of the SP with be with whoever gets the FIT payments which will be pretty significant having been installed 10 years ago. If the OP actually bought out the contract they would get that back over time through the FIT payments and reduced electric bills. That would be the option I would take. 

badmemory

It sounds like a bad installation to me.  There is no way a pigeon could get under mine.  A mouse just maybe but not a pigeon.

I may be making some bad assumptions here but - Can I assume that you are currently able to use any power generated when it is generated but do not have batteries & everything else is exported which you currently do not get paid for.

Keep_pedalling

badmemory said:

It sounds like a bad installation to me.  There is no way a pigeon could get under mine.  A mouse just maybe but not a pigeon.

I may be making some bad assumptions here but - Can I assume that you are currently able to use any power generated when it is generated but do not have batteries & everything else is exported which you currently do not get paid for.

A lot of older insulations have quite large gaps between the roof and the panels (our newer ones are flush). You can install guards to stop them getting in but you can’t do that unless you own them. The owners will be being paid for the energy generated not just the amount exported. 

Unless the OP is willing to take on ownership then they can’t do anything with them for the next 15 years. If they were buying from a private seller they would have some leverage but not with a HA who would be quite happy to keep the rent coming in. 

badmemory

Thanks for the info KP I always assumed (yes I know) that it was the export only that they owned.  Although thinking about it that makes sense.  In that case I would buy it & then get on a tariff that saves/makes you money.  I suspect also that if you ever want/need to sell it could be a problem if someone else owns it.  I would also be concerned if I ever needed a roof repair if I did not own it.

kirstycobie

thank you everyone, think i’m going to have to buy them but was hoping there was some clause somewhere i could just get them removed without having to pay nearly £5k 

Keep_pedalling

kirstycobie said:

thank you everyone, think i’m going to have to buy them but was hoping there was some clause somewhere i could just get them removed without having to pay nearly £5k 

If you do it would be foolish to have them removed and lose 15 years of index linked income. How many panels do you have?

kirstycobie

Keep_pedalling said:

kirstycobie said:

thank you everyone, think i’m going to have to buy them but was hoping there was some clause somewhere i could just get them removed without having to pay nearly £5k 

If you do it would be foolish to have them removed and lose 15 years of index linked income. How many panels do you have?

there’s 7 panels

QrizB

kirstycobie said:

Keep_pedalling said:

kirstycobie said:

thank you everyone, think i’m going to have to buy them but was hoping there was some clause somewhere i could just get them removed without having to pay nearly £5k 

If you do it would be foolish to have them removed and lose 15 years of index linked income. How many panels do you have?

there’s 7 panels

Assuming 250 watt panels and a southerly aspect, that'll be something like 1500kWh a year earning maybe £4-500 (depending on the exact date of installation), indexed annually by RPI.

Pigeon guards are fairly cheap and fitting shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Folk over on the Green and Ethical forum get this done from time to time, you'll find threads there that might help.

WIAWSNB

If you buy them, do you get the FIT? How much is it?
They should be able to show you the incomes over the past few years.