Solar and Homeowner’s Associations
Many homeowners associations have placed a series of stringent requirements on their residents. Before making any modifications to your home, you may need to consider the idea that your homeowner’s association will be unsupportive of you installing items like solar panels. While your homeowner’s agreement may directly dispute you adding major modifications to your home, it could be for a very simple reason. Here are some facts about Solar and homeowner’s associations.
Most of the time, the bylaws that are hosted by homeowners associations are copy and pasted from the other properties that they manage. In most of these instances, these requirements are made to suit a nether location and they don’t always affect what you could be doing with your own property. Homeowners associations often have a fear of the idea of installing solar panels because they can make the homes in the neighborhood look different from one another and they feel as though a system could compromise the structure of a roof as well.
By appealing to your homeowner’s association and learning more about the design of solar panels, it is possible to show the people in charge that you can go solar and still keep a beautiful home.
There are many ways to counter objections from your homeowner’s association as well. Speaking with a solar consultant and working with them to represent your case could lead to an appeal. Many contractors will go to your homeowner’s board meetings and represent your interests to explain more about the system from the perspective of an engineer. Through this information in these meetings it possible to showcase how solar panels and HOA rules will work together to improve the community and offer improvements to the property as well.
Some of the main aspects of a homeowners association agreement that could prevent you from installing solar panels might include deed restrictions, covenants, binding agreements within the system, and more. The Association and the management company responsible for managing your property requires appropriate permissions before labor takes place on your home. If you install any type of solar project without their consent, they may force you as a homeowner to remove your installation or reposition it in such a way that it cannot be seen from the street.
Even though there are some homeowners association rules that could prevent you from installing solar panels there’s also the defense of the rights to solar power. Solar access laws are an excellent way to fight for your right to solar power and to limit the ability of your homeowner’s association to prevent restrictions on the installation of solar power. The purpose of solar access laws are to make sure that any homeowner will have the ability to install these systems throughout their home and to access ongoing and reliable solar power installations.
Apart from these solar access laws, there’s also a way that you can protect your access to solar power through the form of a solar easement. This is an agreement that will allow you as a homeowner to negotiate with your homeowner’s association in your neighbor to prevent the chance that obstruction could ruin the efficiency of your solar installation. A solar easement is produced in writing and it will allow you to collaborate with your homeowner’s association to produce protection for the solar energy that your system generates. When opening up an easement, your homeowner’s association and any neighbors involved in the easement will need to agree in order to be valid. This is an avenue to make sure that you have consistent access to sunlight for your solar system and the ability to install it with the permission of your immediate neighbors.
If you are having trouble with your solar and homeowner’s association and you would like to install solar panels, contact our team today and we can fight for your access to solar power.
