Selling a Home With Solar Panels in Florida: What I Learned Closing One in Dr. Phillips

If you want to sell your home with solar panels in Florida, do five things: confirm whether the system is owned, financed, or leased; get the solar company's prepay and purchase quotes in writing before you price; run your net sheet three ways because a leased payment counts against the buyer's mortgage; market twelve months of power bills; and hand the title company the solar payoff paperwork the day you go under contract. The rest of this article is the sale that taught me each of those, with the real numbers.

I closed a Dr. Phillips home this month that had a leased Sunrun solar array and a Tesla Powerwall battery on it. The house itself was easy. The solar was not hard either, but it was unfamiliar to almost everyone who touched the file, including the title company, and unfamiliar is where deals get delayed. I am a Florida broker and a licensed mortgage loan originator, so I was reading the lease from both sides of the closing table, and I still learned things.

If you own a home in Central Florida with panels on the roof and you are thinking about selling, this is what I wish every seller knew before the sign goes in the yard. I am going to use real numbers from the sale at 5112 Glasgow Avenue, because the numbers are the lesson.

First, know which kind of solar you have

Nearly every problem in a solar sale traces back to one question: who owns the panels? There are three answers, and each one sells differently.

Owned outright. You paid cash or you paid off the solar loan. The panels are a fixture of the house, like the roof. This is the easiest sale. You convey them with the home, hand the buyer the warranty paperwork, and move on.

Financed with a solar loan. You own the panels but a lender does. In Florida these loans are often secured by a UCC-1 fixture filing recorded against the property, and some are PACE assessments that ride on the tax bill. Either way the balance has to be paid off at closing, exactly like a second mortgage, and it needs to be on the title company's radar from day one.

Leased, or a power-purchase agreement (PPA). The solar company owns the equipment. You pay a monthly amount for the power it produces. There is no lien against your house, but there is a contract that has to go somewhere when you sell: either to the buyer, or you buy your way out of it.

Our Glasgow sale was the third kind, a Sunrun lease signed in January 2025 covering both the panels and the battery. Here is what that looked like in practice.

What the lease actually said

Before I could market the house I read the agreement end to end, and I recommend you do the same with yours. Ours came down to a handful of facts a buyer would care about:

• Payment of $183 per month, covering both solar and the Tesla Powerwall
• Annual escalator of 2.99 percent, with a 5 percent discount for autopay
• Estimated production of about 8,026 kWh a year, roughly 80 percent of the home's electricity
• Parts, labor, and battery under warranty for the full 25-year term at no cost to the homeowner
• No lien on the property, and the home stays connected to Duke Energy

Those bullets became the solar section of every buyer conversation. Buyers hesitate on solar because they do not understand it. Handing them the facts removes most of the hesitation.

Get the payoff quotes the week you decide to sell

This is the single most useful thing you can do, and most sellers wait too long.

A solar lease typically gives you two ways out besides transferring it: a full prepayment, where you pay the remaining lease payments and the solar company still owns the equipment, and a system purchase, where you buy the panels outright and they convey with the house. You need both numbers in writing before you price the home, because they are not what you think.

My seller remembered being quoted roughly $43,000 a year or two earlier and assumed that was the cost of getting out. We budgeted $46,000 to be safe. When the written quotes came back from Sunrun's transfer department:

Option	Cost	Who owns the panels after
Full prepayment of the lease	$43,052	Sunrun
Purchase of the system	$35,857	The homeowner, conveys to buyer

Buying the panels was $7,195 cheaper than prepaying the lease, and it was the better outcome for the buyer because the system becomes part of the house. We had assumed the opposite. Prepaying no longer made sense in any scenario.

Two timing details matter here. The quotes were only valid for 30 days. And the purchase option could only be processed while the home was under contract, so we could not lock the number in ahead of time. Plan to request the figures once, to price the home, and again when you have an accepted offer.

Run the net sheet three ways

Once you have the quotes, the question "what will I walk away with?" has three answers, not one. I build the seller's net sheet in three columns:

1. Buyer assumes the lease, seller pays the solar company nothing
2. Seller prepays the lease
3. Seller buys the system

At our original $425,000 list price the spread between column one and column three was about $36,000. That spread is the entire negotiation. It tells you how much you can give on price, repairs, or closing costs if the buyer takes the lease, and how little room you have if they will not.

If you have never read one of these, here is how a Florida seller's net sheet works, and you can run your own numbers on our seller net sheet calculator.

What the buyer's lender will do with your lease

I am a mortgage loan officer as well as a broker, so this part I knew going in, and it still shaped the deal.

A leased solar payment is debt. The buyer's lender counts it in their debt-to-income ratio exactly like a car payment. On our deal, a $183 monthly payment translated to roughly $28,000 less the buyer could borrow. That is not a hypothetical. Our buyer came in firm at $397,000 and would not move, and the reason was the solar.

The second lender issue is Fannie Mae's Selling Guide, section B2-3. For a leased system the home must stay connected to the utility, and the solar company must not be named as loss payee on the homeowner's insurance policy. A standard lease satisfies both, but the underwriter will ask for the agreement, so have a clean PDF ready to send on day one.

Qualifying the buyer to take over the lease

Transferring a lease is paperwork, not magic. At closing the buyer signs a service transfer agreement with the solar company. For Sunrun the buyer qualifies with a 650 FICO score, or simply by being approved for a mortgage or paying cash for the home, or by paying a $250 credit-check exemption fee. The transfer team handles the rest.

The lesson is to open the transfer request the day you go under contract, not the week of closing. The solar company needs the buyer's information, and the buyer needs to be comfortable with what they are signing. Offer to get the buyer on a call with the transfer department. I did, and it took the mystery out of it.

One more thing most sellers do not know: the lease agreement required my seller to purchase the system if no buyer would assume it. That is the fallback, and it is why the purchase quote matters even if you fully expect the buyer to take the lease.

Use your power bills as marketing

Here is the good news in all of this. Twelve months of Duke Energy bills on this house averaged $34 a month, for 1,646 kWh billed over the whole year. In a Florida summer, that number sells houses. The Powerwall is a real selling point too, because it means lights and air conditioning when the grid goes down in a storm.

Pull a year of bills before you list. Put the average in the listing remarks and in the brochure. Have the bills in the house during showings. Buyers who walk in skeptical of solar walk out asking about the battery.

The paperwork mistake that almost cost us the closing date

This is the part nobody warns you about.

Our contract clearly stated that the solar system would be paid off at closing through the title company. Everyone read it. Everyone agreed. And five days before closing, the title company emailed to say they had just noticed the solar payoff in the contract, had nothing in their file about it, and needed the solar company's documentation immediately.

Nobody had sent it. The seller had the quote email. I had the quote email. The title company had a line in a contract. A mortgage payoff is routine for a title company; a solar buyout is not, and they will not chase it unless you hand it to them.

Then it got worse. The solar company said a DocuSign would arrive within 48 hours. It arrived the morning of closing, with an error in it, and my seller had to re-sign a corrected version while the notary was literally on the way over. We closed, but only because the seller was responsive at 3 p.m. on a Monday.

The fix is simple. The day you go under contract, send the title company three things: the solar agreement, the written payoff or purchase quote, and the solar company's transfer-department contact. Then ask title to confirm in writing that the solar payoff is in their file and on the settlement statement. Treat it like a second mortgage, because to the closing it is one.

Say exactly what the listing means by "payoff"

Our MLS remarks said the panels would be paid off at closing "under certain terms." The first question from the first buyer's agent was: what terms? Fair question.

If you intend for the buyer to assume the lease, say so. If you will buy the system out, say so, and say whether that is at any price or only at full price. Vague solar language invites buyers to assume the worst and price it in. Clear language lets them price in the $34 power bill instead.

A checklist for Florida sellers with solar

Before you list:

• Confirm whether the system is owned, financed, or leased, and pull the agreement
• Check for a UCC-1 fixture filing or PACE assessment on the property
• Request written prepay and purchase quotes from the solar company, and note the expiration date
• Gather 12 months of power bills and compute the monthly average
• Build the net sheet three ways and decide what you can give on price under each one

Once under contract:

• Send the solar agreement, the quote, and the transfer contact to the title company the same day
• Open the lease transfer request with the solar company and get the buyer on a call if they want one
• Refresh the purchase or prepay quote so it is valid through closing
• Ask title to confirm the solar payoff is on the settlement statement a week before closing, not a day

A solar home in Central Florida is not harder to sell. It is a sale with one extra party at the table, and that party moves slowly. Give it the same attention you would give a second mortgage and it will not touch your closing date.

If you are thinking about selling a home with solar, a battery, an EV charger, or a smart-home setup in the Orlando area, start with the solar-equipped home seller page or a free home value estimate. I will read the lease with you before we price the house, which is where this sale was won.

The figures above come from a Sunrun lease and Duke Energy account on a home sold in Dr. Phillips in October 2026. Your agreement, payoff, and lender requirements will differ. Confirm specifics with your solar company, your title company, and your loan officer. Fannie Mae's solar policy is in Selling Guide section B2-3.