Such great advice from all. I'm leaning towards walking away. The house had the roof replaced in 2019 and has a Golf Cart Garage and lots of other upgrades. I've asked the sellers if they would pay off the lease, but have not heard back as yet. I'm already under contract on my home, so I have to find something very shortly.

read the to be purchased contract from vendor
cost to break lease
cost to remove panels
cost to reshingle house

add 30% to the total of the above costs

deduct from asking price.

bid on the house, and tell the seller that the price is good until you find a better value as you will keep looking, and keep on looking!

you are being the seller's "exit liquidity of last resort", and you may get the house on your terms. . .

rent short term, fully furnished to take your time finding your dream home. . there is no rush to buy. . and right now, its not a great time to rush buying. . our house was rented primarily by people moving into the villages and had not found a house to buy yet. .

Purchase the home but don’t assume the lease the leasing company will remove them.

Excellent advice from Sportsguy. Ask yourself if you are moving to Florida to relax and enjoy the life you have left or if you want to take on a big problem that may keep you busy for a long period of your retirement trying to straighten things out.

Yes consider renting for a while and take the burden off yourself (BTW, we did it this way).

If your cost is $56 k , that’s over $2200 per year. I doubt your electric bill would be much higher than that. I also doubt the system will last 25 years. Does not sound very attractive at all. I would pass on that one!!

It’s summer and tons of homes are available to rent at great prices. Rent for a month or two then find something in a different area. It a great way to figure out where you will enjoy living.

As several others have noted, rent for a few months before you put in another offer. We got rid of most of our furniture and household items by giveaways, donations, trash, etc. then contacted Pods for their smallest container and had it shipped to Ocala. They store the containers in a conditioned warehouse. Once we settled on the new home we contracted for new flooring, countertops and painting. Also had purchased furniture and scheduled its delivery in concert with the arrival of the Pod, and set up the house in very short order.

You can also move all your furniture to a climate controlled storage.

Homes with solar panels are a hard sell. Take that from a x realtor.

Even if they pay off the lease, thats just one issue of many. If you are dead set on this house, you want the lease paid off, solar panels removed and that part of the home re-shingled.

Don't get in too big of a hurry. You can easily find a house to rent this time of year.

Solar (PV Arrays) in theory sound great, however when it takes tax incentives to make the deal work it's one indication that without the incentives the concept may be flawed. I would only consider them if I lived on a mountain top and there were no other options, e.g., off the grid.

I am involved in commercial real estate as part of my job and have direct experienced where some insurance companies refused to offer property coverage when solar panels were installed on a large building. The rational for declining the commercial coverage was that in the event of a fire the fire dept would not be able to penetrate/attack the fire through the roof which is a common method with all the PV equipment that was installed.

Also, I have analyzed a number of lease/ground lease PV proposals, where the owner is renting the roof or acres to the PV company for a long period of time. For the average homeowner the level of complexity and financial risk would suggest taking a pass on the opportunity. Most of us are not equipped to evaluate the risks, ongoing expenses and potential hazards associated with such an installation.

I also evaluated three proposals for my own roof in CT against PV companies, and even with the high electric cost in our area the risk/return did not make sense. I used discounted cash flow analysis as well as the incentives from State/Federal programs and still didn't make sense or the breakeven was over 12 - 13 years, again that was the breakeven on a DCF basis.

Also, like the ever-improving technology with CPU's e.g., "Moore's Law" there is a similar "Law" that applies to PV systems the proposition being that PV technology for solar panels becomes more efficient over time referred to as "Swanson's Law". This law states that the price of solar photovoltaic modules decreases by approximately 20% for every doubling of cumulative solar capacity.

Good luck, might want to take a pass for now.

run, don't walk away from that boondoggle. Neighbor next to me was selling house with similar setup. Buyer would not buy it until homeowner removed the panels and fix the roof. Seller eventually did that and used the panels on his other house in South Florida.