Negotiating Solar in a Claremont Deal: Buyer Tactics

Most buyers treat solar on a Claremont listing as a fact of the property, like the roof pitch. It is closer to the furniture: something the parties can agree about. A lease can be assumed, bought out, credited, or refused. A financed system can be paid off, adjusted for, or occasionally carried. An owned system can be priced generously or sceptically depending on what the file supports. All of that is NEGOTIABLE, and buyers who understand it write better offers than buyers who accept the array as a condition of entry. This article deepens the solar guide; the triage that comes first is the first questions guide.

Rule one: establish the category before you write anything

Every tactic below depends on knowing which arrangement you are dealing with, and the answer is not always what the listing says. Owned outright, owned with financing behind it, leased, or under a power purchase agreement - these produce four different negotiations. A buyer who opens with a position before establishing the category is guessing, and the seller usually knows more than the buyer at that moment. Ask, get the document, and only then decide what to ask for.

The corollary is a timing rule: raise solar in the OFFER, not in escrow. A term written into a contract is a negotiation between two interested parties with a deal to make. The same term raised in week three, after inspections, reads as a request for a discount and gets treated like one, however reasonable it is.

Leased and PPA systems: the three asks

Where a third party owns the equipment, a buyer has three coherent positions and one incoherent one. The incoherent one is silence.

Ask one: assume, with a condition attached. Willingness to take over the agreement is worth something to a seller, and it should be paired with protection: an offer term making the purchase contingent on the buyer's review and approval of the agreement, and on the provider approving the assumption. Both are ordinary requests. The first gives the buyer a way out if the contract turns out to be worse than described; the second acknowledges that the provider's approval is a separate process the parties do not control, as the escrow transfer guide explains.

Ask two: seller buys it out before closing. This converts a contract into an owned asset that conveys with the house, which is cleaner for the buyer in every respect. It is a real ask with a real cost to the seller, so it competes against price. Its strength is that the buyout figure is knowable - the provider quotes it in writing - so both sides can negotiate against a number rather than a feeling.

Ask three: a credit or price adjustment. The middle path, sized against the buyout quote or against the burden of the remaining term. Its advantage is flexibility; its risk is that a credit does not remove the obligation, so a buyer who takes money instead of a resolution still owns the contract afterwards. That is a fine trade when made knowingly and a poor one when made because the buyout looked complicated.

Financed owned systems: a payoff, not a debate

Where the system is owned with a loan or a recorded filing behind it, the default is that the seller's debt clears at closing from proceeds. A buyer's tactical work here is confirmation rather than persuasion: read the preliminary title report, ask escrow what each solar-related entry is, and get the contract to say plainly who is clearing it and by when. PACE assessments are the exception that needs early attention, because their treatment depends on program terms and on the buyer's lender - the mechanics are in the payoff guide. A buyer who leaves this to 'we will sort the solar' has left the least ambiguous item in the deal ambiguous.

Owned systems: negotiate the file, not the panels

On a fully owned system there is nothing to assume and nothing to pay off, which tempts buyers to treat the array as a free extra. The productive negotiation is about VERIFICATION. Ask for permits and final inspection, the interconnection agreement, warranty documents, installation date and installer, and evidence the system is producing. Ask for a system inspection within the investigation period.

Findings are leverage in the ordinary way. An unpermitted installation is a genuine issue and a fair basis for a request. An inverter near the end of its service life is a foreseeable expense. Roof condition beneath the array is its own conversation and one worth having early. None of these are attacks on the seller; they are the same due diligence any material system in a house receives, applied to one that happens to sit outdoors.

What not to do

Three moves cost buyers more than they gain. Removing contingencies before the solar documents have been read and the provider has answered - by far the most expensive habit in this cluster. Negotiating a solar item as a late surprise when the information was available in week one, which spends credibility that could have gone to a real repair request. And valuing an array from its installation cost, which is not how the market or an appraisal treats any improvement, as the appraisal guide lays out.

The buyers who do well with solar are unromantic about it. They establish the category, read the document, get the provider's answers in writing with a date attached, write their position into the offer, and price the property as what it is: a home that comes with either an asset or an obligation, and occasionally both. For the wider map, return to the solar guide. Contract terms belong with the provider and with counsel, payoff and program questions with the lender or administrator, and utility rate questions with the utility. Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.