Do solar panels increase home value? What the actual data shows

The short answer

The strongest evidence says yes, and by a meaningful amount. A 2024 study by Swansea University and the University of Birmingham, analysing close to 1.5 million UK property listings held by the Urban Big Data Centre, found homes with solar panels sold for a 6.1% to 7.1% premium over comparable homes without them, worth around £14,062 to £16,368 on average. That is the most rigorous UK research on the question by sample size and method. It sits alongside a more cautious industry view, and both are worth knowing before you decide how much weight to put on resale value in your own decision.

The more cautious view, and why it is not a contradiction

Ask an estate agent rather than a researcher and you tend to get a different emphasis. Which? reports that most UK estate agents say solar panels do not typically move a formal valuation, and that buyers rarely raise the subject directly, but agents do describe panels as improving a property's saleability, making it easier to sell even where the headline price does not obviously shift. A separate, more conservative estimate from Solar Energy UK's own 2021 analysis put the typical uplift at 0.9% to 2%, and a Land Registry-based comparison cited by Which? found a smaller effect again, around £1,800 for a typical home.

These are not necessarily inconsistent findings. A large-sample statistical study measures what actually happened across the market when a sale completed, which can pick up an effect that an individual agent's day-to-day experience of buyer questions does not surface as clearly. The honest reading is that the effect is real but variable: strongest in some regions and market segments, and genuinely marginal in others, which is exactly what the academic study itself reports.

Where the premium is largest

The Swansea and Birmingham research found the price premium for solar panels was more pronounced in certain regions and market segments, particularly areas with higher poverty rates and at both the lowest and highest ends of the price bracket, where the running-cost saving a panel represents is proportionally more significant to a buyer's budget. That regional and segment variation is a large part of why a single national percentage, however well researched, will not describe every street equally.

Figures as reported by each named source, checked 3 September 2026. Ranges vary this widely because the studies use different methods, samples and time periods, which is itself part of the honest answer.

What seems to actually drive the effect

• The running-cost saving itself. A buyer weighing up two otherwise identical homes is, in effect, pricing in years of lower electricity bills, which is a genuine, quantifiable saving rather than a decorative feature.
• Ownership status. Owned panels transfer value cleanly to a buyer. Panels under a lease or a power purchase agreement can complicate a sale rather than help it, since the new owner inherits the contract, which is why owning your system outright matters for resale as well as for the saving itself.
• Age, condition and paperwork. A recent installation with its MCS certificate, warranty documents and Smart Export Guarantee registration in order presents as a straightforward asset. An old, undocumented system with an expired warranty reads as an unknown to a buyer's surveyor.
• EPC rating. Solar generation typically improves a property's Energy Performance Certificate score, and EPC bands are an increasingly visible part of how buyers, some mortgage lenders and letting agents assess a property, independently of the panels themselves.
• Local buyer profile. Which?'s agents specifically noted that younger, more environmentally conscious buyer pools in some areas pay closer attention to solar than others, which is consistent with the academic finding that the effect varies by market segment rather than applying uniformly.

EPC ratings: the mechanism nobody markets

A less discussed route by which solar affects value is the Energy Performance Certificate. Generating your own electricity typically improves a property's modelled energy cost, which is a meaningful input into the EPC score, and EPC bands are increasingly visible to buyers, letting agents and some mortgage lenders, independently of whether a buyer has any personal interest in solar panels as a technology. A property moving up an EPC band can affect how it is marketed, how some lenders assess it, and in the rental sector, whether it meets minimum letting standards at all. This is a slower-moving, less immediately obvious effect than a headline sale-price percentage, but it is a real one, and it applies whether or not the specific buyer of your home ever asks a single question about the panels.

Buying a home that already has solar

The same evidence works in reverse if you are the one buying rather than selling. A home with an existing, well documented solar installation is effectively pre-paying you a running-cost saving from the day you move in, and the questions worth asking mirror what makes a system a clean asset rather than an unknown: is the system owned outright or under a lease, what is the panel and inverter warranty status, is there a working Smart Export Guarantee arrangement in place, and does the seller have the MCS certificate. Answering those well is the difference between inheriting a genuine saving and inheriting someone else's unresolved paperwork.

What this means if resale is part of your decision

Do not treat a home-value premium as free money layered on top of the bill saving; treat it as a real but uncertain bonus that depends on your area, your buyer pool and how well documented your system is when you come to sell. The bill saving itself is the more reliable number, because it does not depend on anyone else's valuation, only on the electricity you generate and use. Our are solar panels worth it guide covers that arithmetic in full, using the Ofgem price cap and Clearline's own installed pricing rather than a market-wide average.

If resale genuinely matters to your decision, the practical steps are straightforward: keep the MCS certificate, warranty documents and any Smart Export Guarantee confirmation somewhere a future conveyancer can find them, own the system outright rather than leasing it where you have the choice, and keep the installation current rather than letting a fault or a dead inverter sit unresolved for years. None of that guarantees a specific premium when you sell. All of it removes the reasons a premium would fail to show up.

Whichever side of the transaction you are on, the number that does not depend on anyone else's opinion is the generation figure for the roof itself. The solar calculator models that from your postcode, using the same regional yield data behind every county page on this site, so you can see what a specific roof is actually worth to run before any resale premium is even part of the conversation.