Tuesday, July 01, 2014

That took a lot longer than I expected.

It's been a long time since I've had anything to say about solar. To catch all of my new readers up - I think most of the people who have panels on their houses are fools. I blogged about it a lot back in the 2009 time frame. You could tell solar panels were a bit of a Ponzi scheme because the amount of resources they used to try and get people to buy them. You wouldn't need this if it was a good product. It would sell itself.

The sales people even come by my house several times a month to this day. No exaggeration. They are the only telemarketers that I will listen to the whole pitch before I say no. I want to know what the trick of the month is. This week (literally two days ago) the sales person was insistent that with their company you would own the system. This told me that consumers were starting to have a problem with the leases.

Back in 2009 I wrote a post titled : From our brilliant leaders in California where I talked about how all the exotic financing of solar leases were going to make your house hard to sell. Then the recession hit and no one could sell, so shut the hell up. Well, now people can sell again, and that problem didn't go away apparently. This is a quote from my article:

"* Since the solar system stays with the property, so does the tax obligation—if the property is transferred or sold, the new owners will pay the remaining tax obligation.

Did you get that last one? They put a lien on your house making it virtually impossible to sell it. Why would I buy a house with a 20,000 lien, when I could buy one with no encumbrances?
"

Fast forward to reality.

"NEW YORK — Dorian Bishopp blames the solar panels on his roof for costing him almost 10 percent off the value of the home he sold in March.That’s because instead of owning them he leased the panels from SunPower Corp., requiring the new owner of the house to assume a contract with almost 19 years remaining. He had to shave the asking price for the house in Maricopa, Arizona, to draw in buyers unfamiliar with the financing arrangement. " Article here.

Well, I guess I was wrong. You can eventually sell. It will just cost you way more than the panels helped you in the first place. And they don't even protect you against a blackout unless you have the storage battery type - which most people don't.

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