PACENation Statement Regarding Recent Developments in the Residential PACE Industry
As interest rates climb, housing affordability is affecting communities across the US. However, in the face of this uncertainty, one thing remains clear. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) continues to provide access to financing at fixed rates over long terms which is helping homeowners improve efficiency and comfort while making their homes more resilient.
Our industry is weathering the current economic conditions and recently one of our member companies, Ygrene, issued a statement indicating that they have suspended all PACE financing operations.
Other Residential PACE providers -FortiFi Financial, Home Run Financing, and Renew Financial – are working to ensure that affected homeowners can apply for the financing that they may still need.
The PACE industry is well-positioned for growth. The federal government’s recent investment of hundreds of billions in renewable energy and building decarbonization will entice many tens of millions of homeowners to undertake PACE-eligible retrofits. PACE’s industry-leading consumer protections reduce the risk associated with these projects, and the affordability of the financing bolsters the effectiveness of the federal government’s policy.
Additionally, Residential PACE helps homeowners harden their homes to counteract the impact of climate change. Hurricane Ian is the most recent catastrophic weather event, but already this year there have been 15 storms, floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters which each have caused at least $1 billion in damage to American communities. The PACE improvements which have been installed to date have been shown to reduce disaster losses to homes by over $2.2 billion. Residential PACE provides local governments and homeowners with the means to enable these resiliency improvements to be completed at the scale that our changing climate demands.
Please reach out to PACENation’s Managing Director of Residential PACE Juan Martinez (juan@pacenation.org) with any further questions regarding these developments in the Residential PACE industry.