Arizona’s Dream-Killing Solar Panel Lease Scam

If you're a seller, this scam may destroy your ability to sell your home. If you're a buyer, it may prevent you from buying a home. How is this even legal?

One of the biggest shocks I discovered after moving to Arizona is the solar energy scams they have here.

Last year, I was looking to buy a house and was stunned to find out that in this state, when you want to buy a home, you have to consider solar panels as part of the equation. Why?

Because some houses have solar panels that aren’t paid for. How is this even a thing? Of all the stupid ideas ever hatched in the minds of evil men, this has got to be one of the stupidest.

After searching for a home for months last year, my wife and I found a nice house right around our price range, right near the area we wanted to live in, with just about the right square footage, the right number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and it even had a swimming pool. It was a great house, though it was near the top of our price range. It wasn’t perfect, but it checked nearly all of our boxes.

I drove past the house a few times to see how it looked. It was in a nice, quiet, peaceful, family-friendly neighborhood.

I liked it. My wife liked it. I told our real estate agent to put in an offer on it. She said she would.

The next day, she called me with bad news.

“Oh, we didn’t notice until now that it has solar panels.”

“Uhh, okay, that’s a good thing, though,” I said. “We can save money on our energy bill, right?”

“Well, maybe you can,” she said. “But it’s more complicated than that. It’s a lease.”

“Huh? A lease? I’ve never heard of that. What does that even mean?” I asked.

Long story short, it turned out that the house we wanted to buy—which was already bumping up against the upper limits of our price range—had solar panels on the roof that were covered by a 30-year “lease.”

For some idiotic reason, the sellers thought it would be a good idea to tack these unowned monstrosities to the top of the roof before putting the house on the market. But they don’t OWN the solar panels, and they NEVER WILL.

And neither will anybody who buys the house. They’re owned by some solar company I’ve never heard of before, which is separate from the utility company. And if we bought the house, we might not even be able to touch or move the panels, even to replace the roof, without the solar company’s permission. And they might even charge us to do so.

So, what did all that mean to me as a buyer? It meant that if we wanted to buy the house, we would have to apply for a mortgage, AND we would also have to apply to take over a $52,000 solar lease that still had 28 years left on it.

WHAT?!

“So, what if we don’t want the stupid solar panels?” I asked.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “You can’t buy the house without them. They have a separate application process, and you may even have to put extra money down.”

“So, after 30 years, when we finally pay them off, we get to keep them, right?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “That’s just it: it’s a lease. You never pay it off. You will never own the solar panels. You have to agree to take over the monthly payments, and you have to apply for it separately from the mortgage and get approved for it separately. And you can’t buy the house without it.”

So, the house I wanted to buy came with a huge, parasitic growth on top of it like a giant, ugly remora that I would have to pay more than $50,000 extra dollars for, and when it was all said and done… I couldn’t even rip the suckers off the roof and throw them in the garbage can because I wouldn’t even own them.

So, you know what we did with my 100% legitimate, bona fide offer to buy this house? We shredded it.

Of all the dumb, hare-brained, idiotic scams I’ve heard of in my entire life, this one just about takes the cake.

It’s the worst possible idea, with the worst possible technology, with the worst possible financing scheme. It’s a lose-lose situation: the seller loses and the buyer loses. Only the solar company wins.

The people who came up with this scam should be serving time in prison. I can’t even understand how this is legal. Yet, for some reason, it’s everywhere in Arizona.

We ended up not buying any house at all… because more than once, we found a house we liked, and wanted to put an offer on, but then discovered there was an expensive liability on the roof that added $30-$60k more to the total price of the house, bumping it out of our price range.

In the future, if I can ever afford a house again in this market, I’ll have to ensure that I am never again lured by the solar lease trap. I’ll have to avoid houses with solar panels like strangers on a public bus with the bubonic plague: it would be better to never even come into contact with them or know they exist than to be captured by their beauty and go to put an offer on them only to find out that they have a parasitic growth on top of the roof that is a total deal breaker.

I’m not normally a spiteful person, but I was pleased to find out that the first house we were going to put an offer on was withdrawn from the market after failing to sell. What a shocker. 

Months later, it was put back on the market, and it actually sold… for EXACTLY $52,000 less than its asking price.

No surprise there at all.

So, here’s a public service announcement to everybody in Arizona:

Sellers: don’t ever, ever, ever put solar panels on your roof that you don’t own. They’ll prevent you from selling your house, or you’ll have to eat the entire cost of the panels yourself in order to sell it.

Buyers: don’t ever, ever, ever consider buying homes with solar leases. They will waste your time, break your heart, and make your wife cry.

You’ve been forewarned.