You don’t own it until you own it. Unless the system is owned, it’s not appropriately integrated into the value opinion, in my personal opinion. Don’t pay your solar lease bill, and you’ve got a hole in your roof, rather than additional energy efficient systems in place. If tarrifs change, the product costs could change via lease clauses. And with sales agents being typically unware or at least not reporting if systems are owned, leased, leased to own, and also disclosing specific terms, it’s impossible to know and any subsequent energy efficient adjustments against comps are just a guessing game.

The solution which will hopefully gain more attention is to seek non integrated owned solar. You can go to invertersrus and pick up a simple inverter, panel set, and deep cycle battery set for only a few thousand. Mount it on a doghouse in your back yard and then plug an extension cord into that bad boy and run your garage fridge or what ever. And in the future, that’s likely the only way to avoid energy use shaming and improper taxation, all at once. I tell people that solar is not something you need to invest tens of thousands of dollars into and go for long term lease commitments. All you need do is invest what you can when you can and build your system over time.

I have a dream of solar in the future where builders furnish non integrated solar as standard options. Each room has a green and white switch, with convenient little led solar power stock energy level indicator on the green switch.  If the energy is available in the solar batteries, you just flip the green switch instead of the white one. So easy, a caveman whom made sure to never sign absurd long term solar lease agreements could do it. Owning good, borrowing bad.  That’s my position, and I’m sticking to it. Hopefully this is the year I move on my first solar non integrated set up. It’s literally only a few thousand dollars away for anyone whom lives in the USA. Sub one item at a time and make quality selections based on your budget, rather than seeking advisement from the solar salesman. What is the appropriate formula for tackling leased systems commissions vs actual product cost? I don’t think M&S covers that. Why all the attention to tracking solar savings in underwriting but no attention to the ever so predictable inflationary energy costs in the mortgage qualification process? Food for thought.