A PV Solar company wants to build a PV farm on our land. I am not sure what to do.
My dad died a couple years ago and I inherited a farm in the central EU. Some of the land is farm land, some zoned residential. My plan was to rent this house out Airbnb style. The surroundings are very pastural. This is the appeal for “agro-tourism.” We are also very close to ski resorts.
My farm plot is the smallest of all the neighbors, but it is dead center in the planned farm. They want a 30 year lease for our land. One neighbor has already agreed. They are offering about $2500/hectare/year.
My neighbors are actually farmers, and to them this is a big chunk of money. Especially as they have 10+ hectares each, I only have 1.25. For me the money is less than one month’s salary and is not that appealing. Also, this is about 15% of what I expected to make off of the Airbnb which would pay for my retirement. Yes, this is a privileged position.
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I don’t know what questions to ask in negotiations. One thing I verified is that inflation is included, year after year. What else?
Note: Yes I will have a lawyer look at this, but honestly this is the first thing of its kind in our area. -
If you were renting out a house in ski-resort/farm country, would you care if there were a bunch solar panels in the fields instead of farm land? Would you like it more, or less?
Note: I can upload photos or video to give you an idea of the area. -
Will this raise or lower the value of my home for resale?
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Any other general thoughts?
Thanks!
Edit: I should add that I am super-anti CO2, so my default position is “hell yes!” But I am just trying to be pragmatic about this. Of note is that this is the first time in my life I am experiencing a bit of NIMBY-ism. Also, I am extremely thankful for this opportunity.
Personally, I think PV cells are pretty ugly. They're just flat, industrial looking pieces of glass that have a tendency to blind you at certain times of the day. If I was booking a vacation, I wouldn't want to have my view surrounded by them.
On the upside, even though you'll get far less out of this deal than you would renting the place out, you don't have to do anything for it. Renting rooms can be a pain. You have to clean the place, field complaints, deal with disputes, worry about damage. With this deal, you just sign on the dotted line and watch the dineros come in. I'm kind of a lazy guy, so I'd probably do the PV cells myself.
Thanks. I am still hoping to do both? Maybe? The lazy PV income will not pay the bills for retirement.
You are absolutely correct about renting being a giant hassle. I happened to run a 70 home vacation rental company in a previous life, so I am familiar with all that.
Since you are not a fan of the aesthetics, if you don’t mind I’d like to drill down a bit further.
This view will stay intact. In this image the PVs will be behind a fence, about 20m behind the viewer.
https://imgur.com/a/9fHCzhW
This experience, of walking through the wheat fields to the forest trails will be gone.
https://imgur.com/a/G0XDGCZ
Edit: u/papasquat- i forgot to actually ask the question. :) If the first view was there, would you care that when approaching the rental you saw solar panels up the hill?
I think both views, but especially the second are absolutely beautiful. To be honest, if the second were covered in panels, yeah, it would probably spoil it a bit for me. If I had a choice between a rental with PV panels or without them, I'd choose the one without.
I may be in the minority here, but maybe not. I think of myself as a pretty environmentally conscious guy, and I like technology and think photovoltaic cells are cool, and I like looking at them when I drive past, but aesthetics are aesthetics, and as far as beauty goes, I'll take nature over man-made structures 99% of the time.
Presumably, you could still rent the home out airbnb-style, it just won't make as much money as it would without the PV farm.
I wouldn't be surprised if the net income from your property ends up being the same or higher if you do both.
I lived in rural England (in villages around Cirencester) for much of my youth.
I'd prefer a field of solar panels to farmland.
Big wheat fields are environmentally pretty damaging. It'd be far better to plant native to the area wildflowers to help local pollinators and insects, which would help birds.
And the solar panels would be a tiny bit of carbon off-setting for the tourists that would use the villa.
I think it'd be different if it was wind turbines because some people really hate the strobe effect you can get from some turbines.
Farm land is really nothing great to look at, and it's not really an attractive smell for people that are going to be renting a place for short periods of time. It will likely get fenced off from the rest of your property to keep out animals and possibly people, so the type of fencing might be unattractive. IMO since you aren't farming the land, you should let them put the solar farm there. You probably won't lose any business from your AirBnB and still get to collect money without having to do anything.
Resale might be limited for your 30 year contract. You would have to find buyers that want to take over the lease if you try to sell before the contract is up. There might be a handful of red tape in the contracts for this and you should get a very good understanding from your lawyer on what the process would be if you decide to sell the place in 15-20 years. After the 30 year period they generally rip everything out and it becomes tillable farm land again that hasn't cycled any vegetation. It would likely take a year before being decent soil again. But otherwise it shouldn't have affected the value of the land from having the solar farm there.
I just wanted to add that while I generally agree with that, this is what it currently looks like in the summer.
I thought people might find strolling through that appealing.
Well that certainly wasn't the photo I was expecting, but I had a great laugh! Poor grasshopper.
LOL, WTF. IIRC, it was originally a picture of a lovely farm field. What's the deal with changing it to the new pic, @Neverland? :P
Great reply, thanks!
The fence is exactly my main new question. I had just called a neighbor about this exact topic a few minutes ago. If it’s super ugly, that’s a big factor for me. However, maybe we can negotiate that and get the fence style in writing. It’s just the southern border I am most concerned with.
Not european, and super pro-sustainability here...
I'm ok with seeing either, pastoral lands, or solar farms. Both seem very forward thinking in my opinion. Although, I'd prefer seeing windmills, as a "scenic" view (I plan bike tours to include large wind farms). But, unless you're planning on farming, or returning the land to a wild state, the PV farm would be preferred to fallow farm land.
So, that is my obviously biased opinion.
Thanks for your input! The crazy thing is that this offer came in the same week that I was pricing a giant 10Kw rooftop solar array to replace my coal (yes, wtf) furnace with. I was thinking of rebranding as eco-agro-tourism. I am in the very SW corner of Poland. Some of the most common tourists here are German folks.
Are there any German Tildes users, or folks that are familiar with the German demographic, that might have an idea of a common German POV on this?
I live in the Netherlands. But I can tell you one thing: as soon as you drive across the border from here into Germany: solar panels everywhere!
I'm wondering if your property has any advantages other than the view. Is it near anything?
It seems that blocking all your neighbors from getting solar isn't going to happen, so the view is likely gone. But there may still be aesthetic decisions to make (llke growing a hedge or something) and you'd want to have room for them.
Yup, we are 15 minutes from a major ski area. I don’t want to block my neighbors, I actually do want this to happen in a lot of ways. I just want to gauge how big a difference this will make for renters, and then use that to negotiate more $, if possible. :)
Hedge is a great idea.
I honestly think PV arrays can look pretty good but then I'm an Engineer and a slight eco-nerd. Depending on how they're installed they may reflect sunlight towards the house in an unwanted way though (however if they're installed facing away from the house you will have NO issues at all!)
No idea about the price though, if this is their initial offer you may want to bluff a bit and get the price up ever so slightly. ($3000, targetting $2800 after their counter offer)
I don't know the value of land and the amount of sun that comes onto your land (which would influence the price), but I do know a bit about businesses.
Do check with someone else on the value of the land for PV installations. You can also do it yourself by figuring out how much sunlight you receive, how much the panels and installation would cost and expecting them to be paid off after 20 years (1/3rd of their operation would be profitable), find at what point it would not be worthwhile paying for the land
EDIT: Also, lets say this is 15% of what you'd make off the airbnb, but having it around removes 10% of the airbnb rental price still means you make more money. (And you get the money from 2 places where one is fixed, making your income more secure)
Yes please on checking the cost per hectare!
In the states they are offering $3000/acre/year generally for prime conditions (flat and constant sunlight as well as 20+ acres per location). One hectare contains about 2.47 acres. I don't know how that compares to your economy and cost of living, but if it's that profitable here you should have some room to negotiate price.