All right, here we are with another
episode. My name is Brent Attaway
with Switch To Solar.
I'm going to make this fast and
furious. This is going to answer a
big concern or question
people have, and that is, can
I still get solar if I have low
credit, bad credit, mediocre
credit. It doesn't matter what you
call it, lower than,
you know, 700 or 650
is kind of the magic number in most
loans or financing options.
650, if you have a credit score of
650 or lower, can you still
get credit? That's what we're asking
and talking about.
I'm going to give you the short
answer.
The short answer is, in
most companies, the answer's
no.
Usually, you can't get solar
easily.
Yes, you can find ways, creative
financing. We've helped several
clients do that in the past.
You can do pace loans
and other things.
The other part of the short answer
now is, with us, we
have a unique program that
is, yes!
Absolutely.
There's no other disadvantages
for you either.
Frankly, what we've done is partner
with an installation and finance
company that has been able
to, let's call us the
master dealer for them is what
that's called.
And basically what that gives
us and what makes that unique
for us to help our clients
that we've noticed that's been
really beneficial.
In fact, it's been explosive
for us to help more clients
because of course, we have a lot of
clients that have lower credit for
whatever reason, Especially during
COVID and different things where
people are missing payments and so
on. We
can still do this.
The way that this financing works is
you can actually still get a power
purchase agreement where you don't
have to have a loan or anything like
that, and you just agree to purchase
power from solar at a much cheaper
rate.
And you do that
without worrying about your credit.
It can pretty much be any credit
score.
The only two exceptions to that
has nothing to do with a credit
score. If you've had a bankruptcy
within the past two years
and if you're currently late on your
mortgage or have been late on your
mortgage in the last couple of
months.
And I mean late meaning they have
reported.
Your mortgage company has
reported that to the credit bureau.
So the credit bureau needs to know
that you've been late. I don't mean
you're just like 10 days late or
something like that. And it didn't
get reported. All right.
So that's important to understand.
Minus those two things, if your
credit is just lower, yes.
It's not going to harm you at all.
It's not like you get a worse
payment or anything like that on
your monthly power bills, your
new lower monthly power bills.
It's fantastic.
You still get all the same savings.
So the answer is, again,
it used to be where it was a
challenge, but now it's not.
As of this month, which is August
2020, we just started doing this
a month ago.
I guess in July.
And so now we have a new option.
But it does answer that question.
Maybe you're watching this and
you're like, well, "no, I've been
turned down for solar because of my
credit" or my debt to income
ratio so, maybe I had a
700 credit score, but my debt
to income ratio, the credit
check showed that I couldn't
do that.
They didn't want to take on that
risk with solar."
Now, it's important
that everything I'm talking about,
there is an assumption that
you're getting a power purchase
agreement because we do a lot more
of those than loans or purchases
of the system itself.
Most of our clients just want to
save money on their power bills, not
actually own the solar system.
So that's what I'm referring to
here. We have an option for you.
If you have any credit score, we
can help you and we can get you
solar and save you thousands of
dollars, thousands of dollars.
Everyone's so surprised that we can
even do that now because so many
people have talked about solar and
want solar and they never could.
And so they just said, they forgot
about it. They just said, oh, well,
I'm stuck with my higher power
bills. And now that is no longer
the case.
So if you are looking
for an option, you have lower credit
or your credit's been pinged by
something, or you have a high
debt to income ratio.
And so you've been turned down on
solar or you're worried about being
turned down, so you never even
looked into solar...
Now is the time!
We can help you. Definitely.
It's a unique program.
There's no lien on your home.
There's no weird stuff.
It's literally, what's happened
is our finance company we've worked
with, they are just treating it just
like any utility company, like SDG&E
or PG&E or any large utility
company.
They will still run a soft credit
check on you. That's how all of them
do it. If you remember it when
you moved in your home and you
transfer to the utility to your
name,
or maybe it was a new home and you
set up the utility in your name,
they do a soft credit check.
And they check to just see, do
you pay your bills?
That's what's happening with this.
It's treated just the same.
They're doing a soft credit check.
It doesn't touch and doesn't harm
your credit to do the soft credit
check.
It doesn't ping you at all.
And from there, all
they do is just make sure...
it's not even that they're
checking your credit. They're
checking for bankruptcies.
They're checking if you're late on
your mortgage.
That's all they're checking for.
The credit score is irrelevant.
So it's pretty cool.
So if you're looking for that, now
there's an option.
It's pretty fantastic.
Let us know if we can help you.
Hopefully, this also answers the
question in the back of your mind
whether you use our services or not.
Can I get solar with lower credit?
The answer is yes if you work with a
company like ours.
We're very unique.
This is brand new.
The answer's still kind
of yes if you go about it in
creative ways, like using a pace
loan, but even the pace loan
puts a lien on your home.
So that's not the best option
to do a pace loan if you have
something like this. We call it our
"Any Credit PPA" (power purchase
agreement). So
hopefully this answers that question
and we'll keep this short.
Chat with you soon on the next
episode. Thanks.
