Home | Newsletter | Advertise
loading...

Study: Home Buyers Will Pay a $15,000 Premium for Solar Panels

  • February 23rd 2015

by Lark Turner

Study: Home Buyers Will Pay a $15,000 Premium for Solar Panels: Figure 1

Buyers are willing to pay a premium for homes with solar panels, a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy found.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looked at 22,800 home sales, about 4,000 of which had solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, between 2002 and 2013 to determine its findings. It concluded that buyers were willing to pay an average of $15,000 for a home with solar panels.

“Home buyers are consistently willing to pay PV home premiums across various states, housing and PV markets, and home types,” the authors wrote.

The New York Times reported that because the study had a larger sample size than previous analyses, experts find it more reliable.

Though the study looked at how much money the solar panels would fetch based on wattage (the verdict: about $4 per watt), the authors also found that home buyers might be paying extra for the privilege of having any solar panels at all, no matter their size.

“This might indicate that a green cachet exists for photovoltaic homes in our sample,” the authors note. “In other words, buyers might be willing to pay something for having any size of PV system on their homes and then some increment more depending on the size of the system.”

See other articles related to: solar panels

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/study_buyers_will_pay_a_premium_for_solar_panels/9561.

DC Real Estate Guides

Short guides to navigating the DC-area real estate market

We've collected all our helpful guides for buying, selling and renting in and around Washington, DC in one place. Start browsing below!

First-Timer Primers

Intro guides for first-time home buyers

Red Flags Revealed During a Home Inspection Top 5 Tax Breaks For Homeowners Tax Relief for DC Homeowners
Condo Fee Tutorial What is a Rent Back? 10 Ways To Tell If a Home Renovation is Well Done
Obtaining a Basic Business License For Your Rental What is an Adjustable Rate Mortgage? The Splitting the Rent Formula
How Much Cash Do You Need to Buy a House? Is This Condo Building Financially Healthy? Interest Rates and Mortgage Points
The Scoop on Mortgage Insurance

Unique Spaces

Awesome and unusual real estate from across the DC Metro

The Most Intriguing Loft in DC The R Street Firehouse DC’s One-Room House
Dupont Circle’s Old Frat House To Become Alley Home Best Transition From a Garage To a Home The Roundhouse
Tilden Gardens Restaurant-Turned-Home Hits Market Next Week Logan Circle’s Most Intriguing Garage Frank Lloyd Wright Goes Green in Kensington
Sears Bungalow Gets a Modern Makeover Old Town General Store Becomes Three-Level Home Making the Most of a Skinny House
A Studio 27 Renovation on Capitol Hill Once a Carriage House, Now a Home The Bank that Became a Home
From Pie to Hooch to Heroin to Home The Live-Aboards of Gangplank Marina A Treehouse with Rock Creek Park As A Backyard
Modern Tranquility in Sperryville Saddle Up For Stable Living Throwing a Curve at 550 Square Feet
A Modern Hilltop Retreat Tilden Street Restaurant Becomes Spacious Home Focus on Design: A Vastu Unit at 22 West
The DC Area’s First Net Zero Home A Yankee Goes Green DC’s First Carbon Neutral Home
Eco-Friendly Alley House Off H Street The Gym, The Stables and The Firehouse