Solar Homes Receive Premium Sales Numbers

5.12.2011

Solar Homes Receive Premium Sales Numbers

PV Systems Boost Home Prices -Lawrence Berkeley Lab Study:

The Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has published research showing that Californian homes with PV systems installed sell for a premium over homes without such systems.

"We find compelling evidence that solar PV systems in California have boosted home sales prices," says the lead author Ben Hoen, a researcher at Berkeley Lab. "These average sales price premiums appear to be comparable with the average investment that homeowners have made to install PV systems in California, and of course homeowners also benefit from energy bill savings after PV system installation and prior to home sale."

The premium has amounted to between $3.90 and $6.40 per watt installed, or approximately $17,000 for a 3.1-kW PV system.

First of its Kind

The Berkeley Lab research is the first to empirically explore the existence and magnitude of residential PV sales price impacts across a large number of homes and over a wide geographic area. The research analyzed a dataset of more than 72,000 California homes that sold from 2000 through mid-2009, approximately 2,000 of which had a PV system at the time of sale. "This is the most comprehensive and data-rich analysis to date of the potential influence of PV systems on home sales prices," says co-author and San Diego State University Economics Department Chair Mark Thayer.

Solar Nation wonders, in conjunction with our recent coverage of the attitude of Home Owners' Associations (HOAs) toward residential solar installations (including those 30,000 Californian HOAs that forbid them), how much more intelligence the HOA community is going to need about the enhancing effect of Solar on home values before gaining some intelligence of its own.

Apr 27, 2011

Solar Nation