Buying a House With Solar Panels and Battery: What Are They Worth, and What Should You Pay?

Because panels are usually treated as part of the house, but batteries and inverters sit indoors and can be listed as excluded items on the fittings and contents form. Some sellers use that to recover part of what they paid, or plan to take the battery to their next home.

It's a common problem. One r/SolarUK buyer was told the inverters and batteries had been listed as exclusions from the start, with the seller asking £5,000 for them; another was offered a seller’s batteries and inverter “at cost”. Both threads drew around 100 replies, mostly urging buyers not to pay the asking price.

Use the replacement cost as a ceiling and knock off value for age. Most batteries carry a 10-year warranty, so a straight-line approach takes about 10% off per year:

The ceiling assumes the battery would cost the same to buy new. Treat it as a maximum: a second-hand system usually sells for less because you get no new installer warranty. New prices come from Heatable (June 2026); for today's full costs see our solar battery guide.

Less than most sellers think, unless you use a time-of-use tariff. On a 4kWp system in Manchester, storing spare solar for the evening is worth about £142 a year on our figures. Over the 6 years left on a 4-year-old battery's warranty, that's about £850.

With a cheap overnight tariff or a peak-export tariff the value rises, which is why the right tariff matters. Model it in our solar payback calculator. Your offer should sit somewhere between the savings value and the replacement-cost ceiling.

The panels stop working. Solar panels produce DC power that has to go through an inverter, and many battery systems use a hybrid inverter that runs both. Take it out and the panels on the roof produce nothing usable.

The seller would also have to pay a qualified installer to disconnect and make the system safe, which they can't recover. That gives you real negotiating leverage: removing the kit costs them money, while leaving it with you costs them nothing.

The Energy Saving Trust lists the MCS certificate, ownership and transfer forms, any Feed-in Tariff or Smart Export Guarantee contracts, warranties (typically 25 years for panel performance and 5–10 years for products), user manuals and insurance documents. Your solicitor can help with the ownership and transfer forms.

Also ask for the DNO notification (G98 or G99) and the installer's name. If the MCS certificate is missing and the installer has gone, MCS can issue a copy; see what to do if a solar company has gone bust. If the panels are leased from a rent-a-roof company, get the lease checked by your solicitor before exchange.

Yes. If the property earns Feed-in Tariff payments (from systems registered before the scheme closed to new applicants in 2019), they can pass to you. The previous owner must tell the FIT company, and the new owner provides evidence of the change in ownership, such as the sale and purchase agreement.

If the FIT company handles it badly, you can escalate to the Energy Ombudsman. FIT income makes a system worth more to a buyer, so check the contract terms and remaining years before agreeing a price.

Start from the savings value, not the seller's purchase price. Point out the age, the remaining warranty, any inverter replacement due, and that removing the kit would cost them an installer's fee and leave the panels useless.

Ask for a health check before exchange: a local MCS installer can test battery capacity, inverter logs and generation. Compare the system's output with the expected yield for the area on the Greater Manchester borough comparison, and use our solar panel cost guide to see what new kit would cost. For a pre-purchase system check, get in touch.