Solar related

I've got a rep from Standard Renewable Energy (formerly Sunflower) coming out to the house today to give me an estimate, then next week someone from Namaste Solar will be out. After that I'll be making an appointment for Independent Power Systems to come out for an estimate. I need to find out financing options from all of them since the housing market here is so messed up that I can't get enough money to do the solar install out of a house refinance at the moment. So...if none of the solar companies can give me financing that is affordable, I'll have to wait until my house is valuable enough to get me a big enough home equity loan to pay for it. But at least I'll have gotten the specific estimates from the companies and know which system I want to be installed and by whom.

Hopefully the amazing mortgage guy I talk to is correct and this will be a short term dip here and my house will be back to it's most recent value in a few months. I wish my house were actually valued the way Zillow.com says it should be, but my tax assessment was as low as the current Realtor assessed value. As he pointed out, the foreclosure rate during the Great Depression was something like 34%, and even now at the worst its been in a long time, its about 4%. Of course, it appears the average house value in the US is plunging faster than it did during the depression...so maybe that 34% is just in the future yet.