Buy or Lease Solar Panels?

[lovegreenenergy]

Greetings,

I am a resident of Long Island, NY. I've been considering buying my solar panels recently as opposed to the more common practice of leasing them. From my research, it seems like it as an all in all better deal. As far as buying vs. leasing is concerned, I've been thinking about contracting a local company (which I hyperlinked the article I am referring to in this post) after reading about a comparison between the two). Before I make any big decisions, however, I was curious to see if anyone has any experience owning solar panels of their own? Is it worth it in the long run with maintenance costs and everything else?

MOD NOTE. Please do not attach any advertisement links to your post.

[foo1bar]

Are you a real person with a real question about leasing vs buying?
Or just a spam bot trying to improve a company's web presence?
That your first post is a link to a commercial company and you use their name, and a specific location makes me think you're a spammer.

[lovegreenenergy]

Greetings,

I am indeed a real person.. I wanted to share a link to the article I was reading which happens to be a local company .. I went ahead and took the company name out so it doesn't come off that way... and I used the specific location because I am located near them (naturally though, as they are a local company).

-J

[lovegreenenergy]

I am also looking for feedback or thoughts on what the company is saying.. in some ways the offer seems to good to be true with no money down (and also being told credit doesn't play a huge factor) so I want to make sure everything they are saying is legitimate.

[ButchDeal]

Credit does indeed come into play for PPA and Lease. They all have a minimal requirement and further they bundle the deals up and sell them. They have to keep the overall bundle of lease/PPA contracts up, so they can't have very many low credit customers in a bundle or they will not be able to sell it on the market. The system can not be turned on till this bundle is created and sold, causing delays for low credit score customers...

[J.P.M.]

Many posters, maybe even most have solar PV equipment on their property. Some folks own. some lease. Some do something called PPA.

Leasing may make sense in some situations like when users have no tax burden. Even then it has drawbacks. However, to many, and I'd suggest more now than in the past, with the bloom being off the leasing rose a bit, leasing is being seen as more of a fool's bet. See prior threads on this forum. We've about beat the subject to death. lease peddlers will not mention the drawbacks and overstate any dubious benefits.

One, but not the only big reason I owned (past tense) a fair amount of SolarCity stock was due to my belief that people are basically shortsighted and ignorant about solar and can usually only see and fall for the nothing down scam. Kind of similar to renting furniture and appliances, but with a big time commitment you can't easily get out of.

Pay your money, take your choice. Just walk in with your eyes open.

[foo1bar]

Obviously they are trying to get customers.
So I would double check any/all numbers they give.
ex: NYS tax credit is 25% credit? And still usable for 2016 or 2017 tax year?

A 0% down, 3.5% loan with no lien seems cheaper than I'd expect.
With Home equity line of credit rates being 4-5% (and covered by a lien on the house), I'd suspect that the 3.5% rate is lower because the installer is charging you more for the system. (ex. 3.5% on $15K, but the competitor it'd cost $12K and you would pay 5% for the HELOC you used)


I firmly believe buying is better than leasing. Much much easier if/when you sell the house.
But that doesn't mean I'd look at just one company to do the install.
Nor just look at one option to provide the funds.

[aztec]

I would suggest buying for the same reason as the person above mentioned, if you are planning on moving elsewhere in the future it will be much less of a hassle if you are not leasing the panels, if you are willing to take care of the regular maintenance on your own.

[solarix]

- If you can afford to do a straight purchase and can use the tax credits, you will come out way ahead in the long run. (our systems typically pay for themselves in under 7 years)
- If you can't use the tax credits (have no tax liability) then leasing is a way to transfer the tax credits to a leasing company who will give you lower payments (but like any lease they jack up the price to maximize the credits and leave you with very little savings - pay off is 20 years) and hassle is involved when you go to sell your house.
- If you can use the tax credits but have not the cash, there are solar loans that can finance you, but they are typically unsecured with high effective interest rates, and you don't end up saving much - paying off in 10 to 15 years.
As always, you get what you pay for......