Solar Panels and moving
Cross post from r/legaladvice. To start off, I'm fully aware that we made stupid decisions here - I need help understanding our options though.
TL;DR Stupidly trusted in solar company who said we could transfer payments to new buyers when selling house, finance company says loan is non-transferable, may now either be on the hook for solar panel payments on a house we no longer own or lose our dream house and $3000.
About 8 months ago, my husband and I decided we wanted to get solar panels on our house. There's great tax incentives, we had just moved in less than a year before and weren't expecting to move, and we had some friends who were ranting and raving about how great they were (plus, you know, good for environment). We ended up going with a company based in Denver and financed with the company they directed us to. At the time we got our initial quote started, they told us, if you sell your house you have 3 options: include it in the cost of the house and pay off the loan, bring them with you, or transfer the payments to the new owners. Fast forward 7ish months (which is an issue in and of itself) and they're finally installed and on. Fast forward and we arrive at last week. The panels have been active for about 2 weeks at this point. My husband and I love looking at property and so always have Trulia alerts on for areas with good schools, etc. We get one and it's interesting enough that we decide to see it, expecting something to be wrong with it. We fall in love with the house. Nothing's wrong with it, the sellers are going through a separation and need to get out quick so its priced to move, but we need to also. We sign a contract with a contingency to sell ours quickly. We call up some friends who had previously expressed interest in our house, and they say they're down to buy it. We do some math and give them an excellent rate for the market, so long as they can move fast and don't ask for a bunch of minor fixes to paint etc. We tell them we'll transfer the panels to them, they don't have to pay electricity just the $90 or so dollars a month that the financing is. They say great. They sign a contract for the price of the house with the panels as an inclusion. Once we get through preliminary paperwork, our agent says great, go get the paperwork from the solar company to transfer. I call them and they keep telling me they'll look into it and will call back. They don't. I decide to call the financing company. Financing company rep sounds confused when I ask about it, puts me on hold, comes back and says not transferable (not confidence inspiring). I start freaking out. I call my husband and he starts freaking out. I call the solar company again and send emails to little response. I finally get one back from our original sales rep repeating our options as set out before (copy and pasted from his email):
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You can transfer everything to the new homeowners and they can pick up where you left off with the payment.
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You can tie your solar package cost into your appraisal and sell your home as free electricity.
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You can move your system to your new home and Xcel has that information detailed on there website.
I ask him how we accomplish number one. He asks if I've reached out to the finance company. I say yes, and give him the same information from above. He then asks if we can relist our house without the panels included. I nearly have a panic attack but tell him (via email still) the full situation we're in - that we could maybe take them with us and ask him to give us some idea what that would all entail, assuming our friends are open to amending the contract (which they're under no obligation to do, obviously) but that we still would prefer to transfer the payments. And that's where we're currently at, no response yet.
Assuming that he doesn't have a magic solution to make the transfer option work, it seems to me that we're left with three options:
-Talk to our friends and hope they want to take out an additional $35,000 loan or add $35,000 to their home loan to cover the panel cost (although we would get a tax rebate of about $10k and pass that directly to them).
-Talk to our friends and ask if we can amend the contract to take the panels, at some unknown cost to us (but googling makes me think it won't be cheap and may eat away at the equity we'd hoped to put toward the new house) - does anyone know what this might cost?
-Back out of the deal and lose not only our dream house but $3000 in earnest money
I have a whole bunch of questions:
-Are there any other options anyone knows of to transfer the loan to the buyers? We know they're willing, but to ask them to do a new loan or amendment entirely may be different. What would the implications be to them in home buying process? If they were on board, should they wait till after closing? How would that work with any contractual amendments?
-Do we have any recourse with the solar company for the misdirection on how property transfer works? Either through recouping any cost to move the panels or, if we end up at that place, recouping our EMD?
-Are there any options we're overlooking? We're freaking out, any suggestions are helpful.
And I'll say it once again - we know we made some serious missteps, I'm really hoping we can salvage the situation.
Wasn't sure the appropriate flair for this situation.
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