Leased systems are considered personal property rather than part of a house. For many potential buyers, a solar lease is a liability rather than an asset, and may drive some people away.
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Scott Vineberg, a SolarCity customer, received multiple offers for the Scottsdale, Arizona, home he sold in January. The lease made the deal more complicated because the buyers were reluctant to take over the contract and asked him to pay off the balance in advance, about 10 years of payments.
“I don’t think they understood it,” said Vineberg. He refused to pay off the lease, and instead provided years of documentation to verify the monthly energy savings. After the sale closed, the buyers opted to pay off the lease, and Vineberg installed another SolarCity system at his new home.
He had to “price the house lower than houses without solar to get people interested,” said Brian Neugebauer, the real estate agent at Re/Max Excalibur who helped sell the property. Potential buyers, he said, were “scared of the solar lease.”
There was one more hurdle: to take over the contract, SunPower had to approve the new leaseholder. The buyer’s credit score was a few points short of the solar company’s minimum, and was initially rejected. Bishopp had to persuade SunPower to reverse its decision.
Read entire article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-23/rooftop-solar-leases-scaring-buyers-when-homeowners-sell
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