Does Solar Increase Your Home’s Value in Florida?

Updated 10.24.2026

Anyone selling a solar house wants one number. The honest answer is a range, plus one question that matters more than the range: who owns the array, and is anything still owed on it.

What the studies actually measured

Source	What it measured	What it found
Zillow Research, April 2019	U.S. sales from March 2018 through February 2019, compared with similar homes	4.1 percent more nationally, about $9,274 on the median-valued home at that time. Orlando was about 4 percent.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Selling Into the Sun, 2015	22,822 sales in eight states, 2002 through 2013, including 3,951 homes with solar	About $4 per watt, or about $15,000, on an average system of 3.6 kilowatts (kW). A kilowatt is 1,000 watts of panels.
Industry summary reported in 2026	More than 500,000 U.S. sales in 2024 and 2025	Homes with rooftop solar or a high-efficiency heat pump sold for 1 to 2 percent more. That is not a solar-only number.
Northeast Florida listing study, closings January 2023 through July 2026	721 resale homes whose listing text mentioned solar, against similar homes	About $207 per square foot versus $205. Same days on the market (39). Almost the same share of the asking price.

A few warnings belong next to that table. Do not multiply the lab’s $4 per watt by a modern 10 kW roof and call it a $40,000 bonus. That $4 was the sale premium on the small systems of that era, not a promise that a 2026 buyer will hand you your full install cost. Do not use a different Zillow figure that says listings mentioning solar sold 21 percent above “expected” value. That was a keyword search of listing text, not a comparison of similar houses, and it will mislead you.

California company write-ups that claim 5 to 10 percent are readings of California sales, where electric rates are higher. They are not a Central Florida result. Treat them as someone else’s market.

Orlando’s 4 percent is from 2019

Zillow’s Orlando line is the closest thing to a local number, and the sales behind it ended in February 2019. The federal 30 percent tax credit still existed. A typical system was smaller. Net metering had not spent the last few years in the Legislature. Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) had not yet set the cheaper export rates that start after October 31, 2026.

A buyer in 2026 is paying for the bills the system will cut, not for a tax credit they can no longer claim. On Duke Energy Florida and Florida Power & Light, exported power still credits at the retail rate inside the year. On a new OUC account, extra power sent to the grid is worth less after that October date. The same roof is a different product on the other side of the county line. That comparison is the Duke, FPL, and OUC note.

The newest Florida closings barely moved

The only recent Florida closing set I can point to is Northeast Florida, not Metro Orlando. A brokerage research shop read realMLS remarks for Duval, St. Johns, Clay, Nassau, Putnam, Baker, and Bradford counties. From January 2023 through July 2026, 721 resale houses whose listings mentioned solar closed at a median $207 per square foot. Similar houses without that mention closed at $205. Both groups took 39 days. The solar group got 96.2 percent of the original ask. The others got 96.4 percent.

Read the limits. “Solar” here means the listing text, not a verified permit. Only about 24 percent of those listings said the system was owned or paid off. About 10 percent mentioned a loan, a lease, or a payoff. The rest did not say. A leased array and a paid-off array were in the same pile. That alone can wash out a premium. It is still a useful cold shower: in a big Florida market, through mid-2026, advertising solar did not produce a faster sale or a meaningful price gap.

More listings are mentioning it. In the first seven months of 2026, 1.76 percent of those Northeast Florida resales named solar, up from 0.87 percent in the same months of 2023. The feature is becoming ordinary. Ordinary features stop earning a rarity bonus.

Owned, financed, or leased

This is the part the percentage articles skip, and it decides more than the percentage.

Owned and paid off. The panels are part of the house. They transfer with the deed unless the contract says otherwise. A buyer can be told to count them. This is the only version that regularly helps a sale. How you paid, cash or a loan you already cleared, matters less than the fact that nothing is left on them.

Owned, but a solar loan is still open. You own the equipment, and a lender still has a claim on it. That claim is often a Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filing, a public notice that the panels secure a debt. Fannie Mae, the large mortgage buyer whose rules shape many Florida loans, tells the appraiser not to add value for panels that are collateral for a separate loan. The usual fix is to pay the solar loan off at closing from the sale proceeds. Then the buyer owns a clear system, and the appraiser can consider it. Do not assume the buyer can “just take over the payment.” Some lenders allow an assumption. Many do not. Get the payoff in writing before you list.

A lease or a PPA. A company owns the array. You have a contract. Fannie Mae’s selling guide, updated October 8, 2025, says the value of leased panels, or panels owned by a third party under a PPA, cannot be included in the appraised value. The buyer has to be approved by that company, or you have to buy the contract out. A lease can slow a sale or cut the price. It does not add one. The buyer’s side of that paperwork is buying a home that already has solar.

If nobody can prove who owns the panels, the same guide says the appraiser may add nothing, unless a UCC search shows no other lender is claiming them.

What the buyer is actually buying

An appraiser is not required to paste a national percentage onto your house. On an owned system they can look at what it cost, what it saves, and what similar solar houses sold for. In a lot of Florida neighborhoods there are still few solar sales to compare. Thin comparisons usually mean a careful number, not the top of a blog’s range.

Age matters. The federal lab found buyers paid more for newer systems. Panels lose production slowly. The sale premium can shrink faster than that, because a buyer sees older equipment, a shorter warranty, and a roof that may need work while the array is still up. A 12-year-old system on a 20-year-old roof is not the same listing as a three-year-old system on a new roof. If the roof under the array is near the end of its life, read the roof page before you promise a premium. Taking the panels off to replace the roof is a second bill, and a buyer will price it in.

The electric-bill math, which is the part you can actually estimate, is the is it worth it guide and the cost guide. Resale is the leftover, not the reason to sign.

The property tax exclusion is not a sale premium

Florida Statute 193.624 tells the property appraiser not to add the value of a qualifying renewable-energy device to the assessed value used for property tax. Market value, what a buyer pays, can still rise. The tax roll should not rise with the panels. The roof under them is still a roof.

That is a real Florida advantage. It is not proof that a buyer will pay more. You can keep a market bump without a matching tax increase. You cannot point at the statute and demand the bump.

What to have ready before you list

1. Ownership in one sentence: paid off, loan with a payoff letter, or lease with the transfer rules and any buyout number.
2. The closed permit, the interconnection paperwork, and written permission to operate from the utility.
3. Panel and inverter model numbers, the monitoring login, and a year of production. A buyer and an appraiser can use kilowatt-hours. They cannot use “it saves a lot.”
4. Warranties, and the name of who services the system if the original installer is gone. That packet is the company-went-out-of-business page.
5. The utility named correctly. A Duke Energy Florida credit, an FPL credit, and a new OUC export credit are three different stories.

Put that in the listing remarks and in a folder for the inspector. A system nobody can log into looks like a liability, even when it is producing.

Do not install solar to juice the sale

If you plan to sell in the next year or two, a new array is a weak bet as a value project. You pay today’s price, with no federal credit on a system you own. You may not recover it. The Northeast Florida closings are the caution. The older national studies are the best case, and they are old.

If you plan to stay, judge the system on the bills, the roof, and whether you will own it. A clean owned system can come back to you as a partial recovery when you eventually sell, on top of the years of lower bills. Partial is the word. There is not a Florida percentage honest enough to put in a family budget.

This page is general information, not an appraisal, a listing price, or tax advice. A local appraiser and your own utility bill outrank every national average.