Hi, this is Tom Heath with the Mortgage Guidance Group at Nova Home Loans and this is our weekly installment of Mortgage and Real Estate Related Matters. And today’s topic is about solar liens.
When the solar company sells the panels to the homeowner and there’s a loan involved, that often times becomes a lien that has to be addressed if your clients are looking to refinance or sell that home. I bring this up because in years past, solar companies have been very willing to temporarily release the lien or subordinate their lien so that we could do a refinance. We’re seeing that happen less. In fact, the last two loans that I’ve dealt with, the solar company required the homeowner to pay off the existing lien.
Why that’s important is because we’re advising a lot of our consumers that rates may be going down and while home prices are stable and there’s less competition in the market, maybe buy the home now and refinance when rates drop, which is a perfectly acceptable strategy if your clients are acceptable to amenable to that risk. But make sure they understand that things can change their ability to refinance and one of those is solar liens. They might want to really investigate that conversation with the solar company, fully understand what would be required should they choose to refinance in the future.
If you have questions on this, just reach out to me directly. We can talk to more specific situations. If you have any topics you’d like us to cover just let us know. Our website is MGGroupTucson.com. You can email us, call us, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much.
