Christina Mathieson Segura | Real Estate Education

For years, solar panels were a selling point. A green upgrade, a lower electric bill, a line in the listing that made a house feel current. That is not what they are anymore. The panels on a roof today are a contract first and equipment second, usually tied to a lien and a monthly payment that outlast the company that sold them. When that company fails, and more than a hundred of them have since 2024, the problem does not close up with the business. It stays on the house. And the house, sooner or later, becomes a transaction.

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The simplest way to understand this is to hold it next to a mortgage. If the brokerage that sold you your home goes out of business tomorrow, your mortgage does not vanish with it. The loan was never theirs to forgive. Solar works the same way, only with more parties involved. The company that sold the system is frequently not the company that installed it, or the one that financed it, or the one servicing that loan today. They are separate businesses that happened to meet on a single roof. So when a solar provider goes under, large or small, the financing does not go under with it. The panels can stop producing. The repair line can ring to nowhere. The warranty can become impossible to trace. The payments still come due, every month, on schedule.

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This is not a fringe concern, and it is not someone else's market. Attorneys general in six states have brought enforcement actions against residential solar companies in the past two years. The Federal Trade Commission recorded a 746 percent jump in solar complaints. The homeowners who signed those agreements are listing their properties now, and they are walking into transactions more complicated than they understand.

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When a solar company fails, its agreements do not evaporate. They get handed to a servicer the homeowner never chose, and the obligation stays with the property, so the buyer inherits it. There are approvals, monthly payments, and escalation terms that never show up in the MLS. There can be a public filing on the equipment that has to be cleared before the home can close, and clearing it means tracking down whoever holds that interest now, which after a bankruptcy is rarely the company on the original paperwork. On the other side sits the homeowner who paid cash and owns the system outright, counting on their agent to carry that value into the sale, value an appraiser cannot credit unless someone hands them the documentation that supports it. Different situation every time. Same theme. The solar piece decides how, and sometimes whether, the deal closes.

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This is a competence issue before it is anything else. A solar agreement that determines whether a house can close, what a buyer takes on, and what the property is worth is a material fact. When something goes wrong after closing, the exposure does not stay with the solar company. It follows the same path the contract did, to the listing agent who did not disclose and the buyer's agent who did not advise.

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I have watched deals die a week from closing over a filing no one could trace, and sellers lose real money on systems they owned free and clear. None of it had to happen. The knowledge exists and the process is teachable.

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This is in your market.

The only open question is whether you will be ready when it lands on your desk.

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Christina Mathieson Segura is a New York licensed REALTOR®, a licensed Mortgage Loan Officer, a LEED Green Associate, and the educator known nationally as The Solar Lady of Real Estate®. She is Director of Solar Property Solutions at Team Paley, Keller Williams Points North, teaches continuing education on solar in real estate across the country, and presents on the subject at the Triple Play REALTOR® Convention in December. She is the author of five titles, including Solar Agreements in Real Estate: A Realtor's Guide to Ownership, Disclosure, and Risk and The Solar SOS: What Homeowners Need to Know Before They Buy, Sell, or Sign.