The median list price for a house in California is almost $700,000, the highest in the nation aside from Washington D.C. and Hawaii. This compares to a median list price of $328,000 for the United States as a whole. Prices have been surging in many areas of the state in recent years, and housing costs are putting a serious strain on Californians budgets, and hindering opportunities for growth in the state. To make matters worse, officials on the California Energy Commission voted unanimously this week to require new homes in the state to have solar panels, which they estimate will add more than $10,500 in initial costs for single-family houses.
The new mandate, effective January 2020, requires all new single-family homes and multi-family buildings of three stories or fewer to have solar panels installed, with some exemptions for shade and other considerations.
The Commission’s report points to the astronomical housing prices and growing inflation in recent years to make the case that the additional costs would only be a proverbial drop in the bucket. According to the Commission, the additional costs would have a comparable effect on prices of four to six months of normal median home price inflation. This would be small comfort to would-be homebuyers who are priced out.
Furthermore, these additional costs will fall disproportionately on lower-income residents who live in less-affluent parts of the state. The additional $10,500 might not be quite as noticeable in San Francisco where the median list price is $1.2 million, but it would comprise a much larger share of the total home price in Fresno, where the median list price is $256,000.
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