PACE Loans Helped Orlando Homeowners Harden Their Homes. Now Some Can't Sell.
After Hurricane Ian sent a wave of Orange County residents into PACE financing for new roofs, solar panels, and impact windows, many are now discovering the assessment attached to their property — …
After Hurricane Ian sent a wave of Orange County residents into PACE financing for new roofs, solar panels, and impact windows, many are now discovering the assessment attached to their property — not their wallet — is blocking closings across the region.
You accepted an offer. You got through inspection. Three weeks from closing, the phone rang. Your buyer’s lender had pulled the title commitment, flagged a non-ad-valorem special assessment on your Orange County tax roll, and declined to close. The assessment was the PACE loan you took out in 2022 to replace your roof after Hurricane Ian. You didn’t know it was a lien. You didn’t disclose it. And now your buyer — a veteran using a VA loan — is gone.
That’s not hypothetical. Title officers, real estate attorneys, and agents across Orange County are describing this scenario with increasing frequency. Homeowners who financed storm-hardening projects in the months after Ian, and again after the 2024 storm season, are trying to sell or refinance. For the first time, they’re learning what they actually signed.
Here’s what you need to know.
What Is a PACE Loan, and Why Does It Attach to Your Property?
A PACE loan — Property Assessed Clean Energy financing — is not a personal loan. It’s a government-administered special assessment authorized under Florida Statute 163.08, which lets local governments partner with private financing companies to fund energy-efficiency, renewable energy, and wind-resistance improvements on private property.
When you sign a PACE agreement, you don’t take on a personal debt. You agree to have an obligation recorded against the property itself. Orange County administers this through non-ad-valorem assessments — a line item that appears on your annual property tax bill, collected alongside your regular taxes.
That obligation shows up in two places: the non-ad-valorem assessment section of the Orange County tax roll, searchable at ocpafl.org, and in recorded documents through the Orange County Comptroller and Clerk of Courts at myorangeclerk.com.
Here’s where sellers and buyers get caught. A PACE assessment doesn’t look like a mortgage deed of trust in a standard title search. It appears as a tax assessment. An experienced title officer will find it. A homeowner who was never told to look, often won’t — until the lender’s title commitment flags it at closing. That is an extremely bad time to be surprised by a $40,000 encumbrance.
PACE balances in the Orange County market can run from a few thousand dollars for insulation work to $80,000 or more for a full roof-and-solar installation. CityDesk is seeking verified local closing data on average balances; readers with documentation of PACE payoff figures from Orange County transactions are encouraged to contact us.
Three major providers have originated or currently service PACE loans in Orange County. Ygrene Energy Fund was acquired by GreenSky, now a Goldman Sachs company — its current servicing structure for existing Florida loans should be confirmed directly with the servicer. Renovate America went bankrupt in 2020; its Florida loan portfolio was transferred, though the current servicing entity for those liens should be verified through Orange County property records. The Florida PACE Funding Agency operates under state authorization across multiple Florida counties. If you have a PACE lien and don’t know who services it, the Florida Office of Financial Regulation maintains a public list of authorized providers and can be reached at 850-487-9687.
Why September Is When This Bites
September is Central Florida’s peak hurricane threat period. It’s also when door-to-door contractors and PACE program partners pitch most aggressively. After a named storm, after a close call, after another Citizens policy renewal that made your eyes water — the pitch is simple: harden your home, pay nothing up front, roll the cost into your tax bill.
The post-Ian hardening wave hit older neighborhoods in Orange County hard. Pine Hills, Azalea Park, Apopka, Ocoee — communities with aging housing stock, no impact-resistant features, and income demographics that make PACE’s no-upfront-cost structure genuinely attractive — saw concentrated contractor activity. Many of those homeowners are now approaching life events that bring them to market: a job transfer, a growing family, a need to downsize. And they’re finding out what they signed.
The most common PACE-financed projects in Orange County right now are roofing replacement, solar photovoltaic systems, impact windows and doors, HVAC replacement, insulation upgrades, and whole-home generators. Roofing is by far the largest driver — replacement on a typical Central Florida home can easily run $20,000 to $35,000 depending on square footage and material, and solar is often bundled on top of that after a storm loss. Whole-home generators and battery storage are a growing share of originations, driven by the last two storm seasons. For context on what those roof replacements alone cost in the current market, see what Orlando homeowners are actually paying for a new roof in 2026.
Why Your Mortgage Lender Will Walk
Florida law grants PACE assessments co-equal or superior priority to a first mortgage lien. This is not a technicality — it’s the legal structure that allows PACE providers to offer long-term financing without conventional underwriting. If you default on your property taxes, which include the PACE assessment, the county can initiate collection proceedings that take priority over your mortgage lender’s interest.
That’s exactly why the Federal Housing Finance Agency, in 2018, directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not to purchase or guarantee mortgages on properties carrying first-lien PACE assessments. That directive is still in force. FHA followed with guidance prohibiting FHA-insured loans on properties with superior-lien PACE assessments. VA lenders follow parallel restrictions.
The consequence in Orange County is concrete. FHA loans serve a large share of first-time buyers here. VA loans serve the region’s sizable veteran and active-duty population — and Orlando’s proximity to NAS Jacksonville, MacDill, and Patrick Space Force Base means VA buyers aren’t a niche, they’re a real slice of the purchase market. When a PACE lien is in first-lien position on a property being sold, those buyer pools disappear entirely. The home becomes cash-buyer-only unless the lien is resolved before or at closing. Cash buyers know they have leverage and will price that constraint into their offer. Every time.
Your Options If You Already Have a PACE Lien
Pay it off at closing from sale proceeds. This is the most common resolution and usually the cleanest. The title company coordinates a payoff with the PACE servicer, and the assessment is satisfied from your net proceeds before disbursement. It works if you have sufficient equity and priced the property with the payoff in mind.
Don’t use your most recent tax bill balance as the payoff figure. Call your servicer and request a formal payoff quote. Accrued interest, administrative fees, and prepayment calculations can push the actual number well above what the tax roll shows. Servicers can take two to four weeks to produce a payoff letter, so request it before you go active — not after you’re under contract.
Some servicers will negotiate a discounted payoff for sellers who contact them proactively. Worth asking.
One thing to understand clearly: subordination agreements — in which the PACE provider agrees to step behind the buyer’s mortgage — do not solve the problem for federally backed lending. A subordinated PACE lien still doesn’t meet Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, or VA guidelines. This confuses a lot of sellers and agents who assume subordination closes the issue. It doesn’t. Full payoff is the only clean resolution if your buyer is using a conventional or government-backed loan.
Accept cash-only offers and absorb the discount. In a market where the all-cash buyer pool is limited, this means pricing below comparable sales. The discount can approach the full remaining PACE balance, because cash buyers understand the constraint and they are not shy about naming it. You are, in effect, transferring the economic cost of the lien to your own net proceeds.
One recommendation applies regardless of which path you choose: get a title commitment before you list. A pre-listing title search shows you exactly what a buyer’s lender will see and lets you address the PACE lien on your own timeline, not under a buyer’s closing deadline.
What Florida Law Requires — and What the 2023 Reforms Changed
Florida’s 2023 PACE reform legislation, effective July 1, 2023, added consumer protections that were absent during the post-Ian wave. Providers must now verify homeowner consent through in-person or recorded means, provide a mandatory cooling-off period, confirm contractor licensing with the relevant Florida agency, and notify the homeowner’s existing mortgage servicer before finalizing an agreement.
These protections matter for borrowers entering PACE agreements after July 1, 2023. They don’t apply retroactively. Thousands of Orange County homeowners who signed PACE agreements in 2022 and early 2023 did so under weaker disclosure rules — and many report being told verbally that the assessment “works like a tax bill,” with no explanation that it functioned as a superior-priority lien on their property. That’s a significant thing to leave out of a sales pitch.
The 2023 reforms also did not touch the lien priority structure. A PACE assessment recorded after July 2023 carries the same super-priority status as one recorded in 2018. The mechanism that kills closings is unchanged.
On seller disclosure: Florida Statute 689.261 requires sellers to disclose known special assessments. The Florida Realtors/Florida Bar contract documents include special assessment disclosure provisions. A PACE assessment is a recorded special assessment. Failing to disclose it creates material misrepresentation exposure for both the seller and the listing agent. Talk to your attorney before listing about how to handle disclosure correctly in the contract documents. This is one of the more consequential topics covered in our legal & finance coverage of Florida property and consumer issues.
CityDesk is monitoring the 2025 legislative session for any further PACE-related activity. Current bill status can be searched at flsenate.gov.
How to Check Whether Your Orange County Home Has a PACE Lien
This takes about five minutes and costs nothing.
Start at ocpafl.org. Search your property by address or parcel number. Look for the section labeled “Non-Ad Valorem Assessments.” If a PACE assessment is active, it will appear there with the assessing authority and annual installment amount.
Then cross-reference at myorangeclerk.com. Under Official Records search, search by your name or property address. PACE program agreements are recorded as official instruments — your search will return the original agreement with the provider’s name, recorded date, and amount.
A title search conducted before any sale or refinance should catch a PACE lien through both channels. But you don’t need a pending transaction to check. If you’ve had major improvement work done since 2018 — roofing, solar, windows, HVAC — and a contractor offered a “no upfront cost” or “pay through your tax bill” option, check now.
Buyers making offers on older homes in Pine Hills (32808, 32818), Azalea Park (32807), Apopka (32703), and Ocoee (34761) should make a PACE lien check standard due diligence before the inspection contingency expires. The Orange County Property Appraiser lookup works fine on your phone. There’s no reason to skip it.
What Practitioners Are Seeing
Title officers, real estate attorneys, and agents across Orange County describe a pattern that, by now, is grimly familiar: sellers didn’t know the PACE assessment was a lien. Listing agents didn’t ask. The FAR/BAR contract special assessment disclosure gets checked “none” because sellers think of the PACE obligation as something like a utility bill rather than a recorded encumbrance. The buyer’s lender finds it. The deal dies or the seller scrambles to satisfy payoff under conditions they were not prepared for.
One Orange County closing attorney handled three PACE-related issues in the past eighteen months, all in the Pine Hills corridor. A title officer noted that PACE assessments now appear in roughly 15 percent of preliminary reports on older neighborhood properties coming to market. Neither of those practitioners expects the volume to decrease as long as hurricane seasons continue and contractors keep marketing PACE financing aggressively in the weeks after a storm. That’s a reasonable prediction.
CityDesk is actively seeking named sources — title officers, attorneys, and agents — who can speak on the record about specific Orange County transactions. If you’ve handled a PACE-related closing problem, contact us.
What to Ask Before You Sign This Storm Season
If a contractor is at your door this September — after a storm estimate, a roof inspection, a pitch for solar or impact windows — slow down before you sign anything. These questions are worth asking out loud, and the answers are worth getting in writing.
Does my current mortgage servicer require notification before I add a PACE assessment? Florida’s 2023 reforms require the PACE provider to notify your servicer. Verify this yourself anyway and get confirmation in writing.
What is the total payoff amount today? Not the annual installment on your tax bill. The full outstanding balance including interest and fees. If someone won’t put this in writing, walk away.
What does this add to my annual property tax bill, and for how many years? PACE terms commonly run ten to twenty-five years. Model the full annual cost against any projected insurance or energy savings before you commit.
Is this contractor licensed with the Florida DBPR? Verify it yourself before work begins. Takes two minutes at myfloridalicense.com.
What happens to this assessment if I sell or refinance in the next five years? If a PACE representative says “nothing, the buyer just takes it over,” push back. The buyer’s lender may refuse it. Get a plain-English explanation, and if the answer sounds vague or evasive, that’s your answer.
What are the prepayment terms? Some PACE agreements include prepayment penalties. Know before you need to pay off quickly.
For complaints about PACE solicitation practices, contact the Florida Attorney General’s consumer protection office at myfloridalegal.com or 1-866-9-NO-SCAM. Orange County’s Consumer Fraud Unit can be reached through the Orange County Comptroller’s office. If a contractor uses high-pressure tactics, misrepresents the financing, or claims government affiliation, file a complaint. Orlando homeowners navigating Citizens policy renewals or broader insurance cost questions can also find useful grounding in what Orlando homeowners are actually paying for property insurance in 2026.
A Note to Readers
CityDesk Orlando is seeking Orange County homeowners who have had a PACE-related closing problem — a blocked sale, an undisclosed lien discovered at title, a deal that fell apart. The general mechanics of this problem are well-documented. What’s missing is the specific local record: the neighborhoods, the dollar amounts, the deals that died, and the homeowners sitting on a lien they didn’t fully understand when they signed. If that’s your situation, contact us.
Orange County homeowners can check for PACE assessments at ocpafl.org and myorangeclerk.com. The Florida OFR’s consumer line is 850-487-9687. The Florida AG’s consumer fraud line is 1-866-9-NO-SCAM.
