The Shift, By the Numbers
44% of salespeople reported more than half of their 2025 projects used third-party-ownership financing (lease or PPA). That is expected to hit 65% in 2026, with the share of reps selling zero TPO dropping from 9% to just 1%. Customer-owned market share fell from 54% to 43% during 2024 alone, while TPO grew from 40% to 52% in the same period.
The regional swings are more violent than the national average suggests. Michigan went from 1.16% TPO to 38.96% TPO in a single year. Connecticut went from 9.23% to 50.00%. A sales leader planning territory-level pitch strategy off last year's numbers in either state would be building a pitch for a market that no longer exists.
Why: Section 25D Died, Section 48E Didn't
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act ended the 30% Section 25D residential tax credit for any system installed on or after January 1, 2026, with no phase-down. Cash and loan buyers who own their system outright get zero federal credit under this structure. Section 48E, the investment tax credit, is still available, but it is claimed by the system's owner, not the homeowner, which is exactly why TPO structures are surging: under a lease or PPA, the installer or financier owns the system and can still claim the 30%-equivalent credit, then price that savings into the homeowner's monthly payment.
This is a mechanical, not sentimental, shift. The tax math changed on January 1, 2026, and financing structure moved with it.
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Book a Solar CallWhat This Means for the Pitch
A pitch built around loan-buyer ownership economics, equity buildup, eventual payoff, full tax benefit to the homeowner, is now aimed at a minority of the realistic buyer pool in most markets. Sales leaders whose scripts and objection-handling still default to "you'll own it outright" as the primary value prop are increasingly pitching against the market's actual center of gravity, not with it.
This also changes what "financing-agnostic" appointment quality actually means in practice. An appointment that only converts under one financing assumption, say, a lead vendor that filters hardest for loan-qualified homeowners, converts through less and less of the market as TPO's share climbs toward 65%. An appointment sourced without a financing-path filter converts across all three: cash, loan, and TPO.
What This Means for Pipeline and CLV
TPO deals change more than the pitch script. They change the revenue relationship: instead of a single-sale margin, an installer or financier holding the system under a lease or PPA has an ongoing relationship with the homeowner, which is part of why forward-thinking installers are shifting toward customer-lifetime-value models, battery upsells, EV chargers, and referrals, layered on top of the base solar sale rather than treated as separate transactions.
For a sales org still measuring pipeline health purely on cash-and-loan close rate, TPO's rise means the health of the pipeline is now underrepresented by that single number. A pipeline that looks thin on loan-qualified closes may be perfectly healthy once TPO conversions are counted the same way.
A Sales-Leader Checklist for the TPO Shift
- Check your state's TPO share against last year's number specifically. Swings like Michigan's (1.16% to 38.96%) and Connecticut's (9.23% to 50.00%) can outdate a territory plan in a single season.
- Audit your pitch deck and objection scripts for loan-buyer-only framing, and build a parallel TPO pitch if one does not already exist.
- Reframe pipeline health metrics to count TPO conversions alongside cash and loan closes, not as a separate, secondary category.
- Make sure any purchased appointments are sourced financing-agnostically, not filtered toward loan-qualified homeowners only.
- Layer CLV thinking (battery, EV charger, referral) into every TPO deal from the first conversation, not as a later upsell.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Reps reporting majority-TPO book, 2025 to 2026 | 44% to 65% (projected) |
| Reps selling zero TPO, 2025 to 2026 | 9% to 1% (projected) |
| Customer-owned market share, 2024 | 54% to 43% |
| TPO market share, 2024 | 40% to 52% |
| Michigan TPO share, one-year swing | 1.16% to 38.96% |
| Connecticut TPO share, one-year swing | 9.23% to 50.00% |
National figures from gosolo.io's 2026 Solar Trends Report and IntegrateSun. State-level swings from Aurora Solar.
What this means for you
- TPO (lease/PPA) financing is projected to reach 65% of solar reps' books in 2026, up from 44% in 2025, driven directly by the Section 25D tax-credit cliff.
- State-level swings are extreme: Michigan (1.16% to 38.96%) and Connecticut (9.23% to 50.00%) both moved in a single year.
- A pitch built purely on loan-buyer ownership economics is now aimed at a shrinking share of the realistic buyer pool in most markets.
- Financing-agnostic appointments convert through cash, loan, and TPO alike; loan-filtered leads convert through a shrinking slice of the market as TPO climbs.
Sources
The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- gosolo.io, 2026 Solar Trends Report
- Aurora Solar, TPO solar financing trends 2026
- Aurora Solar, TPO, OBBB, and why third-party ownership has never been more important
- IntegrateSun, solar dealer fees, the hidden cost
- SEIA, clean energy provisions of the Big Beautiful Bill