Every solar lease exit guide lists the same four options: cancel in the cooling-off window, transfer the lease, buy it out, or fight the contract in court. What almost none of them do is put a number next to each one. That's the actual decision you're making — not "which option exists" but "which one costs the least given where I am in the contract right now." Here they are, ranked cheapest to most expensive, with the real numbers and the catch attached to each.
1. Cancel in the cooling-off window — free, but the window is smaller than it sounds
If you signed within the last few days and haven't had the system installed, this is the only option on this list that costs nothing. The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule (16 CFR Part 429) gives you 3 business days to cancel any contract signed at your home or a temporary sales location — a kitchen-table pitch, a hotel presentation — with no reason required and a full refund owed within 10 days. Some states or individual solar companies extend this to 14 or 30 days; check your contract and your state's home-solicitation sales law, not just the federal floor.
The catch: the solar company is legally required to give you written notice of this right when you sign. If they didn't, your cancellation window may not have started running at all — which means it could still be open months or years later, not just days. That's worth having a lawyer check before you assume you've missed it. But if the window has genuinely closed and the system's installed, this option is off the table, full stop — you move to the paid options below.
2. Transfer the lease to a home buyer — near-zero cost, but it can cost you the sale
If you're selling the house anyway, transferring the lease to the buyer is usually the cheapest real exit, because you're not paying anything extra — you're handing the remaining payments to someone else. The mechanics: the buyer submits a credit application to the leasing company, which runs a hard credit check, verifies employment, and calculates debt-to-income ratio with the lease payment included. Approval typically requires a FICO score in the 680–720 range and takes 2 to 4 weeks, which you need to build into your closing timeline.
The catch is real and underdiscussed: some buyers walk when they find out the panels aren't included free — they're a monthly obligation they're inheriting, one that escalates annually (more on that below), and one that shows up on their own debt-to-income calculation when they apply for the mortgage. Real estate agents report deals falling through specifically over solar lease transfers often enough that it's worth pricing the risk, not just the mechanics. If your buyer's DTI is already tight, an assumed lease payment can be the thing that sinks their loan approval — which sinks your sale.
3. Keep paying it out — cost depends entirely on the escalator, and it's higher than people expect
This is the default "option" — do nothing — and it's the one nobody actually calculates. Most solar leases and PPAs include an annual payment escalator, typically 1.9% to 3.9%, with 2.9% being common. That sounds trivial until you run it over the life of a 20 or 25-year contract: a 2.9% annual increase roughly doubles your monthly payment by the back half of the term. A lease that starts at $150/month is paying close to $300/month by year 24 — for the same panels, generating the same (or by then, degraded) output.
Run the actual math before assuming "just keep paying" is the cheap option: take your current payment, apply your contract's escalator rate, and sum it out to the end of the term. Compare that total to the buyout cost below. For leases signed in the first 5–8 years of a 25-year term, the total remaining payments frequently exceed the buyout price — which flips the "cheap" option into the expensive one once you look past next month's bill.
4. Buy out the contract — real money, and the number is negotiable
Buyout pricing usually comes from one of two methods, and your contract may specify which applies, or let the lessor pick whichever is higher. The cost approach values the system at its depreciated hardware value — often low, since used panels and inverters don't hold value well. The income approach — which most solar companies default to — values the system on the net present value of the electricity it's projected to generate over its remaining life; because retail electricity rates have climbed, this number often runs high even on a mid-life system. Some contracts specify a fixed buyout schedule instead — for example, $18,000 at year 7, dropping to $14,000 at year 10, $8,000 at year 15 — which is more predictable but not necessarily cheaper.
Early buyouts, in the first five years of a lease, commonly run $15,000 to $40,000 depending on system size and remaining term. Ask your lessor in writing which valuation method applies to your contract and get the exact figure — don't accept a verbal estimate. If the number seems inflated relative to a comparable new install in your area, that's a legitimate point to push back on, especially if your contract allows an independent appraisal.
5. Challenge the contract legally — free if you win, expensive if you don't
If the salesperson misrepresented your savings, hid fees, or the company never disclosed your cancellation rights, you may have grounds to void the contract entirely through rescission — which, unlike a buyout, can mean walking away without paying anything further. This is a real option, not a long shot, in states with strong consumer protection statutes around door-to-door and home-solicitation sales.
The catch is that "may have grounds" requires a consumer protection attorney to evaluate your specific contract and sales interaction — and attorney fees, even at a consultation, aren't free. Don't stop making payments while you pursue this; missed payments during litigation complicate your case and start damaging your credit regardless of how the legal challenge turns out. This path can be the cheapest option on this list if you have a strong misrepresentation claim, or the most expensive if you don't and end up owing the balance plus legal costs on top.
6. Stop paying — never actually the cheap option, whatever it looks like short-term
This isn't a real exit option, but it's worth naming because people drift into it by inaction. At 30 days past due, most solar lenders report the delinquency to credit bureaus — a single 30-day late mark can drop a credit score 60 to 110 points, and it stays on your report for up to seven years. The company doesn't have to remove the panels; removal is expensive, so most lessors prefer to leave the system in place, shut it down remotely if it's a lease, and pursue you in court for the remaining balance plus attorney fees and court costs. You end up owing close to the buyout number anyway, plus the credit damage, plus legal costs — the worst-costing path on this list by a wide margin.
The honest bottom line
If you're still inside your cancellation window, take it — today, in writing. If you're selling, price the transfer risk into your listing and start the credit approval process the moment you're under contract, because the timeline is longer than most sellers expect. If you're staying put, run the actual escalator math before assuming the buyout is the expensive option — for many mid-lease homeowners, it's the cheaper one once you add up what's left to pay. And if something about how the lease was sold to you doesn't sit right, get a consumer protection attorney to look at the paperwork before you do anything else — that conversation costs far less than defaulting your way into owing the same amount with worse credit.