Does anyone finance their panels?

[dancudds]

Like others I took the Sunlight 10 year @ 4.99%. Sure there are better rates with HELOC and I can't beat that interest with my savings but Sunlight was the easiest to get setup (in terms of paperwork and credit reporting etc).

I plan to pay this off in the next year or so but it's not a miserable rate if I get stuck with it somehow. The loan is secured on the solar equipment and not the home.

I couldn't really find a credit card I was that excited about using. Sure I turned away 1.5% additional cash back but my initial plans of getting enough miles for a business class roundtrip to Europe went to crap recently

 

[ragedogg69]

1. The first payment is due in November, 2020. I guess they give Tesla as long as possible to actually get the system installed. I hope I'm up and running before November!

Same for me. They had me at 4.99% for 20 years. Not the best, however I am trading out a $200 power bill for $150 Solar and Powerwalls. First due date is December 1st.

 

[PT920]

For those of you who used Mosaic to finance your panels, when did they started reporting to the credit bureaus?

 

[Zer0t]

For those of you who used Mosaic to finance your panels, when did they started reporting to the credit bureaus?

Do you consider it odd that financing would show up in your credit report?

 

[willow_hiller]

For those of you who used Mosaic to finance your panels, when did they started reporting to the credit bureaus?

Supposedly I have my final loan agreement signed, but they haven't yet showed up on my credit report. Not even as an inquiry.

 

[Willy3]

Anyone else notice the monthly payments quoted on the website design tool don’t come out to 4.99%? When I plug the cash amount into on online loan calculator With 4.99%, I consistently get payments that are lower than Tesla’s. Tesla’s seem to be about 5.5%. Am I missing an origination fee or something? Do the loans through Tesla’s partners end up matching the quoted monthly payment on the website?

 

[willow_hiller]

Anyone else notice the monthly payments quoted on the website design tool don’t come out to 4.99%? When I plug the cash amount into on online loan calculator With 4.99%, I consistently get payments that are lower than Tesla’s. Tesla’s seem to be about 5.5%. Am I missing an origination fee or something? Do the loans through Tesla’s partners end up matching the quoted monthly payment on the website?

If I recall correctly, my monthly payments ended up being slightly lower than what Tesla was estimating on their site.

 

[strago13]

Finally agreed pricing with Tesla yesterday and pressed the I agree button. We ended up with a 16 kw system that is expected to produce ~15 kw. My guess based on looking at our roofline, we will overshoot that.

With that being said, I think the general consensus from before if I remember right was that I should sell my own SREC's even if that requires more of my time? Telsa is offering me ~$2.5k for them

Thanks

 

[wjgjr]

Finally agreed pricing with Tesla yesterday and pressed the I agree button. We ended up with a 16 kw system that is expected to produce ~15 kw. My guess based on looking at our roofline, we will overshoot that.

With that being said, I think the general consensus from before if I remember right was that I should sell my own SREC's even if that requires more of my time? Telsa is offering me ~$2.5k for them

Thanks

What is your annual production number in MWh? That will give you the number of SRECs you generate annually.

Your profile says DC - if you are actually in DC, it looks like each SREC is currently worth $425 (SRECTrade | SREC Markets | District Of Columbia | DC), so it is absolutely no-brainer unless there is something weird about how SRECs work in DC since you should probably generate a good $6k-$8k in the first year. But if you are in MD, it is $76 now, could go down next year (and, depending on when you install, you may have few SRECs generated this year) and will definitely be down by 2022 and beyond, based on current rules. Still better to do it yourself, but it becomes a closer question as to if it is worth the effort (and also noting that there are fees associated with selling the SRECs on the market.)

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Finally agreed pricing with Tesla yesterday and pressed the I agree button. We ended up with a 16 kw system that is expected to produce ~15 kw. My guess based on looking at our roofline, we will overshoot that.

With that being said, I think the general consensus from before if I remember right was that I should sell my own SREC's even if that requires more of my time? Telsa is offering me ~$2.5k for them

Thanks

Absolutely positively do NOT hand over your Washington DC SRECs to anyone. You guys have about the best in the nation due to having such limited space for solar and high mandates for renewable energy. My SRECs sales are handled automatically by a service and the funds are dumped into my checking account. No touch, no bother.

 

[PT920]

Do you consider it odd that financing would show up in your credit report?

No. I am in the middle of a refinancing process so I gave my bank the heads up but would like to know when to expect it to show up.

 

[BrettS]

For those of you who used Mosaic to finance your panels, when did they started reporting to the credit bureaus?

For what it’s worth, I was approved with Mosaic on 5/18. My system was installed by Tesla on 6/22 and 6/23. The first payment from Mosaic to Tesla was sent on 7/3. And According to Credit Karma, Mosaic still doesn’t appear on my credit report.

I don’t recall whether I had an inquiry from them or not.

 

[niveknow]

Sorry but is Mosaic the Tesla default lender that is mentioned on the Tesla order pricing details?

I'm also on the fence about a loan. Cash is always preferred, but I like sitting on more cash for the next big market correction. =) This means either a lower rate with 3.99 not great.. but not too bad either. or some funny credit card buys which doesn't seem to make much math sense for my cards with 1% cash back which is $300-500. Sure free $3-500, but still essentially paying all in cash when bill comes due.

 

[willow_hiller]

Sorry but is Mosaic the Tesla default lender that is mentioned on the Tesla order pricing details?

They seem to alternate between Mosaic and Sunlight Financial. Went through and applied for a loan for my first layout and Tesla sent me to Sunlight Financial. And then after a site visit they redid my layout and the second time the application went to Mosaic.

 

[holeydonut]

Anyone else notice the monthly payments quoted on the website design tool don’t come out to 4.99%? When I plug the cash amount into on online loan calculator With 4.99%, I consistently get payments that are lower than Tesla’s. Tesla’s seem to be about 5.5%. Am I missing an origination fee or something? Do the loans through Tesla’s partners end up matching the quoted monthly payment on the website?

You're spot on for the origination fees... these ought to be illegal since it's clear to me that these are buried into a solar lease and many customers (in general; not just Tesla) are getting duped with higher payments than expected. I obtained cash-only quotes alongside financed quotes and I was amazed at the origination fees from both the corporate players and local shops.

Sunrun charged a 4% origination fee; so the moment financing was involved the principal balance of the system went up 4%. So that means you are paying a one-time 4% for the privilege of financing at 3% over 20 years. And the 3% is compounded on the 4%!

This is why home mortgage disclosures have to show an APY in addition to the APR... but solar contracts don't have this type of consumer protection.

Companies like Greensky and Mosaic were notorious for just screwing customers out of a lot of buried interest/fees. It's pretty sneaky if you ask me. No wonder some people end up with a system that costs more than their monthly energy bill!

PACE loans are also notoriously sneaky and more expensive than borrowers expect. The whole thing with payments out of escrow is also a weird way for customers to unknowingly walk into a financial land-mine.

I'm not sure what Tesla is doing, but if you're still pricing things in the sales process, get a quote for cash-only and what Tesla financing would look like so you can impute your own APY.

 

[dancudds]

Still no credit pull for me (although I'm on monitoring 2 of the bureaus). For those that see a slightly higher monthly term - these loans typically have 18 months on the gross (pre-ITC refund) amount and then re-amort assuming a balloon payment.

 

[willow_hiller]

I'm not sure what Tesla is doing, but if you're still pricing things in the sales process, get a quote for cash-only and what Tesla financing would look like so you can impute your own APY.

I don't think Tesla's partners charge an origination fee; if there is one it's essentially rolled into the interest rate. My loan terms matched the cash price exactly:

 

[holeydonut]

I don't think Tesla's partners charge an origination fee; if there is one it's essentially rolled into the interest rate. My loan terms matched the cash price exactly:

View attachment 567639

Cool- so the "amount financed" of $23,400 is the same price you'd pay if you just did a cash-only transaction with them. That's the right way to do things for consumer transparency. Glad Tesla stopped the BS.

Ballparking a what-if scenario using your quote... what I was seeing with Sunrun would look like:
1) Cash only price $22,500 (hypothetical example)
2) With financing the "amount financed" jumps up $23,400 and from there the APR is 3.99%

Anyway, Tesla wouldn't install solar on my house so I never actually got a quote from them.

 

[Willy3]

I don't think Tesla's partners charge an origination fee; if there is one it's essentially rolled into the interest rate. My loan terms matched the cash price exactly:

View attachment 567639

So, I think that would make your APY about 4.215%???

 

[willow_hiller]

So, I think that would make your APY about 4.215%???

To be frank I'm not completely familiar with the differences between APR and APY. I think an APR of 3.99% compounded daily would work out to about 4.07%?

(1 + (0.0399/365))^365 – 1 ?