Homeowners considering adding solar panels to their rooftops should beware of crooked lenders who mislead customers about the terms and conditions of their financing. Shady lenders might also misrepresent the savings that solar energy will deliver, pile fees onto borrowers’ loan balances and misrepresent the impact of the federal solar tax credit.

Not all lenders are so dastardly. But if yours jams unnecessary fees into your loan, it could boost the cost of your solar panel financing by 30% or more above the cash price, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This comes at a time when solar energy is gaining popularity in mainstream communities, not just in affluent markets. The industry owes much of that growth to declining costs and larger incentives from Uncle Sam.

"The average residential solar project costs $25,000," reads the CFPB report, "and federal tax credits currently cover approximately 30% of the installation cost."

Last year, nearly 3 out of every 5 homeowners who opted for solar panels financed their projects. As the number of lenders in the field increases, some of them opt to partner with solar installers. The solar companies then employ a variety of marketing and sales tactics, including going door-to-door, to convince homeowners to go solar -- and to finance the project with their lending partner.

But the watchdog agency found that the rapid rise of nonbank lenders partnering with solar salespeople is raising the potential for illegal behavior and consumer harm. The report states: “Many homeowners are discovering they are being duped and misled into contracts with inflated principals, ballooning monthly payments and electricity savings lower than promised.”

The CFPB found four particularly significant risks: hidden markup fees that are often "baked into" the loan's principal; misleading claims, such as assumptions that the federal investment tax credit is a sure thing (it is not guaranteed); ballooning monthly payments, which could kick in if the tax credit is denied; and exaggerated claims that solar panels will eliminate their monthly energy bills.

The tax deduction for mortgage interest isn’t as popular as it used to be, thanks to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017.

From 2017 to 2021, the number of itemized returns dropped from 30.9% to 9.6%, according to an analysis by economists at the National Association of Home Builders. “Taxpayers who do not itemize their tax returns claim the standard deduction instead, and thus do not directly benefit from deductions such as the (Mortgage Interest Deduction),” reported NAHB.

Some 11.5 million returns claimed the mortgage interest deduction in 2021, and the total amount of mortgage interest deducted was $143.5 billion.

Per TaxPolicyCenter.org, the Jobs Act "increased the standard deduction from $6,500 to $12,000 for individual filers, from $13,000 to $24,000 for joint returns, and from $9,550 to $18,000 for heads of household between 2017 and 2018." That, coupled with a new limit of $10,000 on the write-off for state and local income taxes, started the trend toward less itemization.

Even with the McMansion-building spree of recent years, the good ol' U.S. of A. does not have the largest houses in the world. According to a meta-analysis from decor company The Perfect Rug, Australia ranks first in home size, followed by New Zealand. The U.S. takes the bronze.

In Australia, the average house clocks in at 2,303 square feet. In neighboring New Zealand, it's 2,174 square feet, while in the States, it's 2,164 square feet.

The average household size in all three countries consists of roughly 2.5 people.

According to a report from The Builder's Daily (part of Builder Magazine), the leaders of 21 publicly owned American homebuilding companies took home an average of $11.5 million in compensation last year. Each.

The range is significant: Stuart Miller of the Lennar Corp. earned the most on the list at $34.3 million, while Eugene Bredow of NVR earned the least, at $1.8 million.

And you wonder why housing prices are so high.

Certainly, these officials have delivered some of their organizations’ highest earnings in what could have been several down years. But still -- holy smokes.

"Real estate is a high-churn business," writes industry analyst Mike DelPrete on his blog: He says that roughly 144,000 agents switched brokerages between this June and last. That’s 10% of the entire realty workforce, he points out.

According to DelPrete's analysis, the agents newest to the job were the most likely to switch agencies.

In 2021, about 3.3% of adults aged 30 and over -- roughly 6.7 million people -- lived with their grandchildren, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. And about one-third of those living with grandkids under the age of 18 were responsible for their care.

Attention, buyers: How are you going to pay your share of the sales commission on the house you want to buy?

Under the terms of the gigantic $418 million antitrust settlement with the National Association of Realtors, commission splits have now been uncoupled, meaning each side is responsible for their share of the fee.

You’ll know what your agent expects in the way of compensation when you sign the buyer representation agreement. This agreement is what you’ll be asked to sign before you actually set foot in a house that’s for sale. But how you pay is up to you, your seller and your agents.

First, though, you don’t have to actually sign anything with an agent, at least not a contract that binds you to them while you are house-hunting. And the Consumer Federation of America suggests caution. “Understandable agreements have the ability to empower buyers and transform their relationship to agents,” says CFA’s Steve Brobeck.

If you must sign a contract, sign one without any financial obligation, at least not until you actually settle on the place you intend to purchase. Toward that end, Zillow has produced so-called touring agreements for two dozen states that allow agents to work with buyers while meeting the requirements of the NAR’s class-action settlement.

Described as introductory contracts that allow agents to explain the services they provide and their compensation models, the pacts permit agents to still show potential buyers houses without tying them to each other. The pacts expire in seven days, at which time you can sign a binding buyer-agent contract or walk away.

“To put it simply, most people want to date before becoming exclusive,” Zillow explains. “This approach lets you and the buyer enter the first showing with a signed limited services agreement that satisfies requirements outlined in the NAR settlement.”

Now, about how you are going to pay your agent: Start by asking the seller to reduce their price by the amount of your share of the commission. Since most sellers bake the cost of the total sales commission into their asking prices anyway, that shouldn’t be especially difficult.

According to Redfin, buy-side commissions have been falling since the NAR settlement and now stand at 2.55%. But the CFA believes buyers should shoot for 2% at most.

Next, you have to decide how you are going to come up with the extra cost. Buyers and sellers can still negotiate who pays what between themselves. And while listing agents are now prohibited from posting on their multiple listing services what share of the sale’s fee they will part with, they can still post that information on their own websites and those of their companies.

Listing agents can also take the full commission and then rebate the buy-side agent’s share at closing. Or sellers can offer cash concessions at settlement to their buyers equal to the buy-side agent’s fee, with that amount paid to the buyer’s agent at closing.

Buyers also have the option of paying cash to their agents. Or they can finance the fee as part of the mortgage.

No choice is ideal. For example, it’s tough enough to come up with the money for a down payment. But it could be prohibitive if you have to pay your share of the commission out of your own pocket. Consequently, financing the charge may be the best way to go.

Here’s an example, using for simplicity purposes a $300,000 sales price with a 6% commission. The total commission would be $18,000, with each agent taking half, or $9,000. If you figure on making a 10% down payment -- $30,000 -- nine grand more is a lot of extra money most buyers don’t have.

With 10% down, your mortgage would be $270,000. But if you add your $9,000 share of the commission, you’d be borrowing $279,000. The difference in payments for those two amounts is $54 more a month -- $1,619 vs. $1,1673 -- which works out to $648 more a year or $6,480 over 10 years.

It would take almost 14 years to reach your breakeven point. After that, you’d be paying more than the original $9,000 fee. Any time before that, though, you’d come out ahead.

But there’s a lot more to the financing equation than just money.

For one very important thing, the two quasi-government secondary market outfits that keep the mortgage money flowing by purchasing loans from primary lenders and rolling them into securities for sale to investors worldwide have yet to say whether they would buy loans that include commissions.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decide against making an exception for commission amounts, over half of all mortgages including the charge would be ineligible for purchase. And since most lenders follow Fannie and Freddie’s guidelines, a lot more loans than that will fall by the wayside.

Then there’s the question of your loan-to-value ratio. If the loan amount includes the commission, your LTV will be higher, which could kick you into another mortgage program with a higher interest rate and would require an even larger down payment. You might even be required to pay a higher mortgage insurance premium.

(For the uninitiated, mortgage insurance is required on all loans in which the borrowers put less than 20% down. The insurance protects the lender in case you fail to make your payments, but you pay for it.)

There’s a lot of give-and-take when it comes to buying a house. Buyers and sellers will haggle and dicker over the selling price, the closing date -- even over which items stay with the house and which ones the seller can take.

But perhaps the most important bargaining takes place over the report from the buyer’s home inspector. If the report is as specific as it should be, it'll list everything that’s wrong with the place, right down to a burned-out lightbulb.

The problem is that many buyers use these reports as clubs to beat down sellers until they agree to pay for every little thing. When buyers go too far, sellers often opt to cast them aside and wait for the next one to come along.

Whether you realize it or not, if you, as a buyer, ask the seller to make any kind of repair, you are renegotiating the contract. In effect, your request for repairs rejects the original offer and introduces a new one -- one the seller does not have to accept.

The lesson for buyers, then, is: Don’t sweat the small stuff. As Missy Yost of EXP Realty in Charleston, South Carolina, wrote for Inman a few years back, buyers must “understand which repairs are necessary and which may annoy the seller enough for the deal to shatter.”

Her advice: If repairs are not related to a safety issue or the breakdown of an expensive system, you are not doing yourself any favors by asking the seller to make them.

This is not to say buyers shouldn't ask sellers to fix or replace major items that are faulty. If your inspector reports that the air conditioning could fail at any minute, you certainly should demand that it be replaced. Ditto for a roof on its last legs.

These and other expensive repairs are not ones that most buyers want to cover; after all, they are probably going down to their last nickel just to get the place. And sellers shouldn’t ask buyers to assume a burden they should have undertaken themselves years ago.

Buyers have a strong bargaining position if and when sellers are alerted to major structural issues with the home. And if the buyers do decide to walk away, the law in most places says the sellers must notify any future would-be buyers of those defects. Unless those big-ticket items are rectified, only buyers looking for fixer-uppers will apply. So why not agree, or at least negotiate, with a buyer who’s still showing interest?

At the same time, though, buyers should never nitpick. Pay more attention to the bones of the building than the cosmetic stuff. If something can be easily repaired or replaced -- a chipped bathroom mirror, for example -- or doesn't cost much, do it yourself once you move in. Ask yourself: Is it worth blowing the deal over a $300 item?

Nitpicking also extends to old but perfectly serviceable roofs, HVAC systems and appliances. You are buying a used house, not a brand-new one. Besides, you saw these items every time you toured the place; if anything, their age should have been a factor in your original offer.

Even something that is a safety concern, but can be rectified easily and inexpensively, can be overlooked until you move in. For example, unless building codes say differently, you can choose to install working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors after closing but before you take occupancy.

On the other hand, there are some things you might want to address, even if they don't seem overly serious. For instance, the house won’t fall down because of sticky windows and doors, but they're a pain to deal with.

Sellers are more inclined to deal with buyers whose repair requests are reasonable. To buttress their bargaining position, savvy sellers have their homes inspected, and take care of any issues found, before even listing them. That way, if the buyer’s inspector says the place is in horrible shape, the seller will know something is fishy.

That’s what happened to one of Arizona agent Anna Kruchten’s clients a while back. As she wrote on ActiveRain in 2016, the buyer’s inspector noted that the roof had been patched, and suggested having a roofer look at it. The roofer said the whole thing had to be replaced -- to the tune of $12,000. But the seller had had the roof inspected annually, so he knew better.

Kruchten then called in one of her trusted inspectors, who found nothing wrong. The seller refused the buyer’s pricey demand, and the deal moved ahead. But that dishonest roofer “could have blown the sale out of the water,” Kruchten wrote.

This is not to say that sellers should reject every repair requested by the buyer. Just because you’ve lived with an overloaded electrical system for years without incident is no excuse to turn a blind eye to a serious hazard. But at the same time, don’t try to make complicated repairs yourself. Hire a professional -- if only because the buyer’s inspector can probably spot amateur work.

“Saving $200 to $300 for an electrician or plumber could end up costing you thousands in the end,” Adam Long of HomeTeam Inspection Service told Realtor Magazine in 2022.

Take electrical work: Depending on the extent of the project, you might need a permit or two, and bad wiring is flat-out dangerous -- potentially resulting in a fire or electrocution. Not only that, but inspectors can spot shoddy wiring in a heartbeat, and the buyer may demand that it be redone by a professional.

So why not hire a pro in the first place?