The TRUTH ABOUT SOLAR LEASES #realestate #shortvideo #shortsvideo #business

28 Feb 2025 · 1 min

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0:45

Steve D Valentine describes his negative experience with solar leases on rental properties: he negotiated the leases into the sale price (reducing price to offset the lease), dislikes solar leases because they rarely produce a positive ROI, and reports maintenance/reliability problems when leased systems fail. He notes property management applied a roughly $100 utility surcharge to tenants to recover savings lost to the owner paying the solar lease. Overall tone is critical and cautionary toward solar leasing for rental properties.

Questions this video answers

Steve D Valentine.

February 28, 2025.

About $100 (speaker says, "I think there's like $100 utility surcharge for solar").

Chapters

I have a couple of houses that we have solar leases on. They suck. But guess what? I negotiated the solar lease into the price and I reduced the price to cover the solar lease. Freaking hate them now. Here's the difference, though. Is that the good news? Property management thinks outside the box. They do have a utility surcharge for solar because they're saving the money on the utilities. And I'm paying for the solar lease. So I think there's like $100 utility surcharge for solar so that we can at least get some of that back and cover the lease. So there's a way to do that, right? It's a utility surcharge. So I'm with you, Lisa. I'm not a big fan solar, and so far it's never penciled out return on investment, no matter what. I mean, if you lease it, all you're doing is exchanging payment to APS to payment to a solar system that's going to be outdated in 12 months. And the problems that I've seen on my rentals when it goes out, it's just a freaking disaster.