Cash, Loan, Lease, or PACE: Comparing Solar Financing Options in Florida

Updated 10.01.2026

The cost guide is the price of the equipment. This page is who owns it, who you owe, and what that debt does to the house. The monthly payment is the last number to look at. It is also the first number a salesperson wants you to look at.

Start with the cash price

Ask for the cash price before anyone mentions a payment. That is the price of the same panels, the same inverter, and the same labor if you paid by check. Every other offer is that price plus the cost of someone else’s money, or a contract in which you never own the equipment.

If the amount financed is higher than the cash price, the difference is a fee. Write both numbers down. A quote that will not show the cash price is not ready to sign. The sales-pressure note is the rest of that conversation.

Cash

You pay the installer. You own the system the day it is turned on. There is no interest, no lien, and no escalator. Florida’s property-tax rule applies because the device is yours: under Florida Statute 193.624, the property appraiser may not add the just value of a renewable energy device to the assessed value of a home, for a device installed on or after January 1, 2013. It is not a check from the state. It is the panels staying off the tax roll. Confirm it on the next TRIM notice. The incentives page has the filing details, including the sales-tax exemption on qualifying equipment under Florida Statute 212.08(7)(hh). The invoice should show that exemption. If it shows sales tax on the panels, ask why before you pay.

The federal credit that used to refund 30 percent of a purchased system, Section 25D, does not apply to a system placed in service after December 31, 2025. A 2026 cash price is the real price. Nobody is coming in April to hand back a third of it.

Cash is the cheapest way to own the system if you have the money and you would not be emptying the emergency fund to do it. It is a bad trade if the cash was the roof reserve or the hurricane fund. A paid-off system does not keep the lights on in an outage. That still takes a battery, which is a second purchase, covered on the battery page.

A loan, and the fee inside the low rate

A loan also leaves you as the owner, from day one, if the contract says so. The property-tax exclusion is the same as cash. You owe a lender instead of having written a check. That is the whole product.

The rate on the brochure is not the cost. Installer-arranged solar loans are famous for a low interest rate that was bought by adding a dealer fee to the amount you finance. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looked at this in its solar-financing spotlight and found those fees often run about 10 to 30 percent of the cash price, and sometimes more than half. The fee is frequently left out of the annual percentage rate, the APR, which is the rate that is supposed to show the cost of the credit. A 3 percent or 4 percent rate on a contract whose principal is $8,000 higher than the cash price is not a 3 percent loan. Paying it off early usually does not give the fee back, because the fee was added to the principal on day one. Ask the lender that question in writing.

A loan from a bank or a credit union, or a home-equity line, is a different animal. The rate is the rate, and the amount financed should match the cash price plus any points they disclose. Posted rates in 2026 are not a single number. Excellent credit can still see something around 5 to 7 percent from a direct lender. Plenty of borrowers are offered the high single digits or more. One Florida installer was advertising 7 to 8 percent through a bank partner in September 2026. That is an example of a posted rate, not a quote, and it is a long way from the old “3 to 6 percent” line that left the dealer fee out. Your offer is the only rate that matters. Bring the cash price to the bank and let them finance that number.

Terms of 10, 15, 20, and 25 years are all in the market. A longer term lowers the payment and raises the total interest. Run the total dollars paid, not the monthly number, against the cash price. A loan that costs more over its life than the electricity it offsets is a loan that does not pay for the system. The is-it-worth-it page is the math. Financing cannot fix a system that was too expensive for the roof.

Most of these loans are unsecured, or they are secured by a fixture filing, a UCC-1, rather than by a mortgage. A UCC-1 is a public notice that the lender claims the equipment. It is not the same thing as PACE. It does show up when you sell or refinance, and the lender has to release it when the loan is paid. Get that release in writing at payoff. Do not assume the title company will notice a leftover filing.

If the installer closes, the loan does not close with them. You still owe the lender. The warranty on the equipment is with the manufacturer. The installer-gone page is that split.

PACE

PACE is Property Assessed Clean Energy. Florida authorized it in 2010, in House Bill 7179, now Florida Statute 163.08. You do not borrow against your credit score. The provider pays the contractor. The debt is a non-ad valorem assessment on the property tax bill. It stays with the property. If you do not pay it, the county treats it the way it treats unpaid property taxes, which can end in a tax deed sale. That is a different risk from a personal loan you can default on without the house being sold for taxes.

It is not available because a flyer arrived. Since July 1, 2024, a PACE provider may offer residential financing in a county only if that county has passed an ordinance allowing it. Orange County’s consumer protection office said in May 2026 that Orange County does not authorize PACE for residential home-improvement projects, and it warned residents about mailers pitching solar, windows, roofs, and air conditioners. If you live in Orange County, a PACE contract for the house is not a product the county has authorized. Other Central Florida counties differ. Do not guess from a salesperson. Ask the county, or apply through a provider and make them show the ordinance, before you let anyone start work.

Where it is legal, the statute’s residential rules, as amended in 2024, are specific. The assessment may not exceed 20 percent of the property’s just value unless the mortgage holders give written consent. Just value is the property appraiser’s market-style value, not the lower Save Our Homes assessed value on a homestead. The term may not be longer than the useful life of the improvement, and it may not exceed 20 years. The total estimated annual PACE payment on the house may not exceed 10 percent of household income. The agreement may not use negative amortization, a balloon payment, or a prepayment penalty beyond a nominal administrative cost. Those are findings the program administrator has to make before you sign. They are not optional talking points.

A PACE assessment is designed to sit ahead of the mortgage. Fannie Mae’s selling guide, the section on PACE loans updated October 8, 2025, says Fannie Mae will not buy a mortgage on a property with an outstanding PACE loan if that loan has lien priority over the first mortgage. The practical result is the one Monroe County and other Florida counties already tell homeowners: a conventional sale or refinance usually requires the remaining PACE balance to be paid off at closing. A cash buyer can sometimes take the assessment over. A buyer using a typical mortgage often cannot. The buying-a-home page is the other side of that table. If you might sell or refinance before the assessment is paid down, PACE is an expensive way to buy a system you could have financed with a loan that does not jump the line.

There is no honest single “PACE rate” to print this year. The provider sets a fixed rate. Get the rate, the term, the amount added to the tax bill each year, and the payoff figure. Then compare that payoff with a bank loan on the same cash price. PACE is a way to get the work done without a credit check. It is not cheap money, and it is not an incentive. The incentives page says the same thing.

SELF

The Solar and Energy Loan Fund, SELF, is a Florida nonprofit lender. It is not a state agency and it is not a tax credit. Its own site, checked in October 2026, offers unsecured solar loans up to $50,000, with terms of about 3 to 10 years, and describes solar rates as starting around 7 percent. The same site states a maximum rate of 11 percent and an average around 8.5 percent. Those are SELF’s posted figures. They change, and they depend on the project and the borrower. There is no minimum credit score. SELF underwrites the ability to repay. Because the solar product is unsecured, the house is not the collateral. That is the point of it, next to PACE. Default is still a default. It is not a property-tax lien.

The older description of SELF as “always more expensive than a conventional solar loan” is too neat. A SELF rate near 7 to 9 percent can be cheaper than an installer loan whose low rate was purchased with a 20 percent dealer fee, and it can be more expensive than a credit-union loan for a borrower with strong credit. Price it against the cash price, the same way.

SELF also uses Kiva, a crowdfunding site, for a smaller loan. That path is a 5 percent fixed rate, about 3 to 5 years, and it is capped at about $10,000 including fees. SELF aims it at women, veterans, and borrowers who are credit-challenged or otherwise hard to finance. Funding is not guaranteed. SELF’s own page says clients are often funded and that you should not count on it. Kiva is not the $50,000 solar loan under another name. If a quote depends on a Kiva loan closing, ask what happens if the crowd does not fund it.

A lease or a power purchase agreement

A lease means you pay for the use of a system the company owns. A power purchase agreement, a PPA, means you pay for the kilowatt-hours the system produces, at a contract rate, and the company still owns the equipment. Either way you do not own the panels. You cannot sell them, you cannot take them when you move, and the property-tax exclusion is not a benefit you “use” the way an owner does. Statute 193.624 tells the appraiser not to add the value of a device to the home. It does not send the homeowner a credit for equipment someone else owns. If a third-party system shows up on your tax roll, call the property appraiser. Do not assume the exclusion and the lease can be stacked into a gift.

The federal piece flipped in 2026. You cannot claim the homeowner credit. The company that owns a leased system or a PPA may still claim a business credit, Section 48E, and may price some of that into a lower payment. That credit is theirs. For wind and solar, a project that begins construction after July 4, 2026 generally has to be placed in service by December 31, 2027, or the company misses it. Projects that started earlier can have a longer window. Whether this particular contract was priced with that credit, and what your payment does if the company does not get it, belongs in the contract. A sentence in a kitchen-table pitch is not that. You do not “still get 30 percent” by signing a lease. You get a contract.

The payment terms are the contract. Many of them raise the monthly amount by about 2 to 3 percent each year. Some do not. Ask for a zero-escalator version and for the buyout price at year 5 and year 10. A buyout that costs more than a new system is not a path to ownership. It is a number designed to keep you in the contract.

Selling the house means the buyer usually has to be approved by the leasing company and has to agree to take over the contract. Approval is a credit check. It is not automatic. Some buyers will not accept it, and some lenders will not either. An owned system transfers with the house. A leased one transfers only if everyone signs. That is the resale point on the home-value page.

A prepaid lease is the 2026 variation. You pay a large sum up front, the company still owns the system, and the company is the one in a position to claim the business credit. You have spent cash and you still do not own the equipment. Treat it as a lease that asked for the money early, not as a cash purchase.

What does not change with the paperwork

FPL will not approve a net-metered system whose estimated production would exceed 115 percent of your annual use. That cap is in FPL’s own net-metering guidelines. Duke Energy Florida and the other investor-owned utilities do not all publish that same sentence. They do cash out leftover credits at the end of the year at a cheap rate, so a system built far above your use still wastes money. OUC sets its own export price. The Duke, FPL, and OUC page is the one to read before anyone sizes the array to the loan payment instead of to the bill. Financing does not raise the cap.

Tell your homeowner insurer before the system is installed, whether you own it or the company does. The company on a lease usually insures its own equipment. Your policy still needs to know the roof has changed. Get the certificates, the monitoring login in your name if you own the system, and the interconnection in your name. A loan or a lease that leaves all of that in the installer’s email is a problem the first time something breaks.

Which one fits

Cash fits if you can pay it without stripping the reserve, and you want the smallest lifetime cost.

A bank or credit-union loan fits if you want to own the system and the amount financed is the cash price. An installer loan fits only after you have seen the cash price, the dealer fee, and the total you will pay, and you have asked whether an early payoff returns the fee. It usually does not.

SELF fits if a bank said no, or if the bank’s terms are worse than SELF’s posted ones once both are written on the cash price. Use the solar loan for the system. Do not plan the project on a Kiva campaign that has not funded.

PACE fits only if your county has actually authorized it, you expect to stay through the term or you have the cash to pay it off at a sale, and you have read the assessment the way you would read a mortgage. It does not fit a house in a county that has said no. It does not fit a house you expect to sell with a conventional mortgage in a few years.

A lease or a PPA fits only if you have decided that avoiding a down payment matters more than owning the system, you have read the escalator and the buyout, and you are willing to make the next buyer pass the company’s credit check. It is not a way to collect the federal credit. The credit, if anyone gets it, is the company’s.

Whichever path you use, the system is still the system. A financing product cannot make a shaded roof produce, and it cannot make an oversized array a good idea on a utility that pays pennies for the leftovers.

This page is general information, not tax, credit, or legal advice. Rates, county ordinances, and the business tax credit’s deadline move. Read the contract and confirm the current rule with the lender, the county, and the utility before you sign.