[hillsilly]

No expert here, but you might look into Livionex dental gel. It’s a little pricey— but if it helps, it will seem like the deal of a lifetime!

[hillsilly]

Amen, Flu!

[hillsilly]

Jazzman, I wonder if we were bidding against each other! We bought a fixer and couldn’t decide if we were the luckiest or stupidest buyers in town. Four years on, the appreciation on our street has been unreal.

[hillsilly]

What happens if you want to add panels to a system already operating under a net metering arrangement? Does the utility allow this, or does it negate the agreement?

[hillsilly]

It was about 2 months for us, too, from purchase agreement to going live. Our utility is Edison and they were the pokiest part of the process. There was a bit of a lag for the net metering agreement application, and then, after the city signed off on the permit inspection, another lag before the PTO (permission to operate) was issued.

We got many bids. Solar City really pushed the lease arrangement. They proposed a smaller system for a higher price– I think the promises of an inverter exchange and long warranty is priced in. There’s also the question of whether a leased system makes it harder to sell a house down the road. In our case, it made more sense to own a system and collect the tax credit.

[hillsilly]

This happened to us and we didn’t feel like it served us, as sellers, well.

“Our” listing agent was more focused on collecting both sides of her deal than assisting other agents who claimed to have offers coming in. We were relocating for work and wanted to get going. This was back in 2009 when the market was sinking. We couldn’t shake the feeling that she was too attached to the buyer.

On the buying side, we got a taste of it again when a seller’s agent put our first-in, full-price offer aside and made an in-house deal, over the weekend, without a counter.

[hillsilly]

Seems to have hit the news: http://news.yahoo.com/qualcomm-preparing-layoff-many-several-thousand-employees-tech-201352444–finance.html

[hillsilly]

I also looked into this right after the NY Times ran an article (“Here Comes The Sell” 8/12/12) on the trend towards renting systems to homeowners.

I got a quote from one of the big outfits. In the end, I decided I didn’t want to trade away my federal tax credit (30%) and utility rebate (varied by company) in order to have them installed “free of charge.” Turned out I’d be sending a check to the solar lease company instead of my utility. Their projection on the increase of electric rates seemed a little inflated. We concluded it’s best to buy them outright if you have the cash. Our monthly electric bill was too small to make the ROI pencil out– for now.

I look forward to AN’s update!

[hillsilly]

Hi, OP.

Understood. Our experience was that the initial elation wore off and we realized that we were Californians, not New Englanders.

Have you gotten into the details of the costs of owning in your area? Excise tax on cars, heating oil contracts, septic pumping? Have you done winters yet? It took a few years of snow plow contracts, ice damns, de-ticking after long walks in the woods, etc. clarify that we did not want to be old in NE. You may feel differently.

Back to your original point, have you looked into credit unions? There are some big employer-related ones in Mass.

[hillsilly]

May I make a suggestion? Rent for awhile.

We went from SD to Boston area. 5 years of adventure– including home ownership. When we decided we wanted to come back to California, we took a huge hit selling our home.

BTW: Russo’s in Watertown is a fabulous green grocer.

[hillsilly]

Adding my best wishes, flu.
(I actually had to register after 5 years of reading without commenting to do this).

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