What Should You Check About Solar Panels Before Buying a Home in Bonita Springs?

Start with who owns the system, because that answer decides what you are actually buying. Then confirm five more things: whether a lease, loan or tax-bill assessment comes with it, whether it was permitted and passed final inspection, how much life the roof underneath has left, how your insurance company will treat it, and which documents transfer to you at closing. Panels the seller owns outright are part of the house. Panels a solar company owns are a contract you would be taking on.

I am Kris Asquith, Broker Associate at Premiere Plus Realty, and I help buyers and sellers across Bonita Springs and eight other Southwest Florida markets. A solar array looks exactly the same from the street whether the seller paid for it or is still paying for it, so this is a question for paperwork, not for the driveway. These are the checks I make sure get done inside the inspection period.

Ask the seller in writing, and ask for the documents that prove the answer. Residential systems usually fall into one of four arrangements:

• Owned outright. The seller paid for the system and it conveys with the home like any other fixture. This is the simplest case.
• Owned with a loan. The seller financed the purchase. That loan generally has to be paid off at or before closing, and some solar lenders record a notice against the property, so tell your title company about it early.
• Leased, or sold to you as power. A solar company owns the equipment and the seller pays a monthly lease or buys the electricity it produces. You either take over that agreement, which usually needs the company's approval and often a credit check, or the seller buys it out. Read the remaining term, the payment and any built-in increases before you agree to either.
• Financed through PACE. The cost is repaid through the property tax bill, which needs its own check, covered next.

Settle which one you are dealing with early. A lease transfer can take weeks, and a payoff changes the seller's numbers. My step-by-step home buying process shows where the inspection and due diligence period falls, and your real estate attorney or title company can tell you how to word the system, or the lease, into your contract.

PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy. Florida law lets an owner finance qualifying improvements, solar among them, through a non-ad valorem assessment collected on the property tax bill year after year. Because the assessment is tied to the property rather than the owner, it can stay with the house after a sale unless it is paid off.

So pull the most recent Lee County tax bill for the address and read the non-ad valorem section, which sits apart from the taxes based on the home's value. If a PACE line is there, raise it with your lender and the seller the same day, because many mortgage lenders require a PACE assessment to be paid off before they will make a new loan on the home. My article on why one Bonita Springs listing carries an extra tax-bill charge walks through that section of the bill using a CDD charge as the example, and a PACE charge is read the same way.

For most addresses inside city limits, the City of Bonita Springs, which runs its own building permitting. Properties in unincorporated areas fall under Lee County instead. A Bonita Springs mailing address does not settle which one applies, because mailing addresses and the city boundary do not always line up, so confirm the jurisdiction for the specific parcel before you search.

A solar installation generally needs building and electrical permits. The record should show when the permit was issued and that it passed final inspection. If the home also has a battery, check whether it was part of the same permit or added later under its own. An array with no permit behind it is a question to answer before closing, because it can complicate insurance, the next roof permit and your own sale one day. My article on checking the permit history before buying in Bonita Springs shows how to read the record and why a clean title search does not cover it.

This is an easy check to skip. Roof-mounted panels are fastened to the roof, so when the roof is replaced the array usually has to come off and go back on, and that is a separate cost from the roof itself. Compare the age of the roof with the age of the system. A new array on an older roof means paying for removal and reinstallation sooner than you may expect, whether the roof is shingle, metal or tile.

Ask your inspector or a licensed roofer to look at the mounts and the flashing around them, at any cracked or slipped tiles or lifted shingles near the rails, and at the attic or ceilings below the array for signs of water. The Florida Building Code sets wind requirements for roof-mounted systems, and the permit file is where you see that the installation was reviewed. If the home sits near the bay, ask the inspector to look at the rails, fasteners and outdoor electrical boxes for corrosion, since salt air works on metal. My article on what to find out about the roof before buying in Bonita Springs covers the roof's age, material and insurance side in full.

Florida law limits an association's ability to prohibit solar collectors on a home, but it does let the association decide where on the roof they go, within limits the statute sets and as long as that choice does not keep the system from working effectively. In practice, many Bonita Springs communities have an architectural review process, and panels, a battery, conduit or an inverter on an outside wall usually need approval before they go up.

If the home already has panels, ask the seller for the association's written approval. If you plan to add them after you buy, read the community's guidelines during due diligence so you know the process and any rules on placement and appearance. Ask the association, through the resale documents, whether any violation is open on the property, so you are not inheriting a dispute over equipment that was installed without sign-off.

Ask the insurance agent quoting the home how that carrier treats the system. Some policies cover roof-mounted panels as part of the dwelling, some ask for details first, and in Florida wind is a large part of what a carrier is pricing. Get a written quote during your inspection period so there is time to act on what the carrier asks for. My article on why two similar Bonita Springs homes get different insurance quotes explains how the roof and the openings shape that number.

On taxes, Florida law generally excludes the added value of a residential renewable energy device from the home's assessed value, so panels are not usually meant to raise the assessment by themselves. A PACE assessment, if there is one, is a separate charge on the same bill. Confirm both for the specific address with the Lee County Property Appraiser and the Lee County Tax Collector, and talk to your CPA about anything beyond that.

Ask for it as one package, and name the system as an included item in your contract. The useful documents are the purchase, loan or lease agreement, the panel, inverter and battery warranties with how each one transfers, the installer's workmanship warranty, the permit and final inspection, the association's approval, and the electric utility's approval to connect the system to the grid. Ask for a year of electric bills too, so you can see how the system has actually performed on this house. The array feeds into the home's electrical panel, so my article on what to check about the electrical system in Bonita Springs is worth reading alongside this one.

The utility account, and any credit for power sent back to the grid, has to move into your name after closing. Ask the seller who they called to arrange it, and make sure the monitoring app login is handed over. On the final walk-through, look at the inverter: it should show the system producing power, with no fault lights.

If you are selling, gather the same package before you list, and if the system is leased, call the solar company first to learn how a transfer works and how long it takes. An organized file reads as a known quantity to a buyer and their lender; a missing document reads as a question. If you are weighing homes, my page on buying a home in Bonita Springs covers the wider picture, and I am glad to go through a specific listing's tax bill and permit record with you. Get in touch or call (239) 300-1427.

This article is a general overview and is not legal, tax, insurance or engineering advice about any particular property. Confirm the specifics with your real estate attorney, your CPA, a licensed roofer or electrician, your insurance agent, your lender, the association, the City of Bonita Springs and Lee County.