In 2017, real estate technology company Zillow published a report indicating that homes with solar sell for a 4.1% premium over comparable homes without solar. That 4.1% figure is frequently referenced, but it’s also almost a decade old. And a lot has changed since 2017.

Solar has moved from early adoption to mass adoption in many states, EVs are far more prevalent, solar technology has improved, and real estate values have fluctuated dramatically in the post-COVID real estate boom and subsequent moderation. 

So, in 2025, how does solar influence the value of a home? Like most things in life, it depends. 

What Real Estate Agents Say About Solar and Home Values

Real Estate agents are typically the gatekeepers in how a home is presented to prospective buyers. This means they might promote features or benefits that they think will help attract a premium for their listing, and they’ll shy away from things that might detract from the value or turn off certain buyers. 

In 2024, the National Association of Realtors published a report on Residential Realtors and Sustainability. Highlights of the report include:

• Roughly a quarter of real estate agents have reported taking professional training on sustainable home features
• Almost a third of realtors indicated that homes with solar panels increased the value of homes
• Almost two-thirds of realtors had been directly involved in a transaction that had sustainable features or attributes

So while it’s difficult to determine if, and by how much, adding solar to your home will increase its value, it’s encouraging that more and more real estate professionals are becoming educated and comfortable being involved in transactions that feature sustainability. 

How Much Does Solar Add to Your Home Value?

Absent an updated Zillow study or similar third-party authoritative source, we rolled up our sleeves and ran real estate transaction database queries to try and determine how solar influenced sales price, in locations where solar is tracked in municipal databases. 

By comparing homes of a similar square footage, identical number of bedrooms, and bathrooms, and in the same zip code, we were able to extrapolate some interesting rules. The national average, as represented by locations with publicly available data, shows that homes with solar sold at a premium of more than 6% compared to comparable homes without solar. 

This means that a single-family home valued at $400,000 sells for a $24,000 premium over a home without solar.

Not Every Location is Equal

As there are hundreds of thousands of homes that have gone solar, the sample size to pull from is getting correspondingly large. When we drilled down into the numbers a bit further, we found that homes in locations with favorable solar economics and solar market penetration of greater than 1% but less than 10% showed the highest return on values. For instance, homes with solar in Michigan and Minnesota sold for over 9% more relative to non-solar comps. Connecticut and Maryland also notched premiums above 7%. 

Somewhat surprisingly, solar states like California and Florida all showed solar home sale premiums, but at premiums of 5.5% (note: Texas, another large solar installation state does not have sufficient publicly available data at the time of review). Why do we think homes in CA with solar have a lower premium value than in the upper Midwest? A few things could be driving this:

• The relative value of a single home transaction in CA is higher than the Midwest. 
• There is simply a lot more solar installed, so homes with solar still stand out, but there’s more competition for them. 

On the other end of the spectrum, we actually found markets where solar returned lower solar value premiums than the 2017 Zillow study. Nebraska and Wisconsin were notable standouts here. Why? Likely due to the lower cost of retail power and a history of unscrupulous companies that operated in those locations that have given the average consumer a negative connotation with solar panels. 

Other Factors to Consider

While the research was exhaustive and yielded results similar to others who have run similar studies, what we don’t have access to is individual field-level data that might help provide context around these numbers. 

For example, homes with leased or third-party owned solar may hold a lower seller premium given the assumption requirement of the lease and the deal friction it creates. We also can’t closely track equipment on individual projects, or the lower value we’d assume is associated to projects with equipment that’s out of warranty, manufactured by companies that are no longer in business, or installed by contractors that have gone out of business. 

And finally, a reasonable expectation would be that homeowners who are investing in solar might be making other investments in their homes that buyers would find value in, such as Level 2 car charging or upgraded energy-efficient appliances. 

Bottom Line

Homes that install solar panels using quality equipment provided by reputable contractors will likely see their home values appreciate. And, in many markets, the appreciation may be more than the investment expense to go solar after factoring in the 30% federal tax credit and other rebates that might be available from states or utilities.