True, in many areas it takes longer than 5 years. That's why I said "depending upon what area you live". Duh!
Defensive, much?
I don't know why you focus on non-typical buyers who want it removed, LOL! There are always going to be weirdo's or people who don't fall within the norm, what we are concerned with is does it make the average home worth more or less? And the answer from looking at a sample of hundreds of comparables is more.
The definition of "...-typical buyers..." is as broad as "...typical voters...". This is not rare.
In many markets there are a subset of buyers actively looking for PV already installed, in other markets rooftop PV is often viewed as a political statement that a large subset of local buyers will find offensive. Many HOA developments even ban PV on the street-facing side of the house.
By contrast air sealing (like insulation) does it's job unseen, though only rarely increases resale value.
If you have air conditioning, the length of the payback period is over-estimated because I've never seen one that took into account the reduction in cooling load that shading the roof provides.
If the attic is insulated to IRC code minimums the shading effect of PV shading a
roof has only a very tiny effect on the peak or average cooling loads. Installing "cool roof" higher solar reflective index (SRI) roofing materials has a small but still larger effect on cooling loads than (not so high SRI) PV shading. In contrast, the effect of shading factors on WINDOWS is orders of magnitude larger. This is easily simulated by any number of modeling tools in commonly used by performance housing architects & engineers.
Yeah, well real-estate agents are generally not known as being the sharpest pencil in the room, LOL! Someone might take issue with the color you painted your house too. It's a fool's game to try to accommodate every weirdo out there - you have to go with the averages.
And those averages vary a lot by local markets, whether any given real estate agent is on top of it or not. My opinion of those agents may even be lower than yours (I have several relatives in that biz
), but they DO generally track and understand features that add or subtract from local resale prices.
The number of real estate agents in my local market listing high efficiency cold climate heat pump systems as "electric heat" is many- this in a 25 cents/kwh residential retail market! While resistance electric heating borders on "unaffordable", the operational cost of reasonably designed cold climate heat pumps is substantially lower than the cost of heating with #2 oil or condensing propane in this market. But it adds effectively nothing to the resale value relative to a house with a fossil burner (any type or efficiency) for heat + split AC (any efficiency ) for mechanicals. This might no be true in other markets.
What's not so obvious is how quickly the payback period is shrinking. This is largely a function of the falling prices of panels and other components.
The pricing & payback trends on PV are quite obvious for people like you and me who pay attention to it. Political & fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns have made it harder for the average person to stay on top of it. Politics (sometimes driven by local utilities) have also skewed the price of single family home rooftop PV to the high side relative to what it costs in some other first-world countries (is the US still a first world country?) such as Germany or Australia.