How to Check If Your Solar Loan Has a Hidden Dealer Fee — 10-Minute Guide

Ten minutes. That is what it takes to find out whether your solar loan principal includes a hidden dealer fee that nobody disclosed in plain terms — and to gather the evidence you would need if you wanted to do something about it.

The CFPB documented in August 2024 that solar lenders frequently add "dealer fees" of 10 to 36 percent to the loan principal, baked in but not disclosed as a finance charge. The Minnesota Attorney General's lawsuit names GoodLeap, Solar Mosaic, Sunlight Financial, and Dividend Solar as defendants for this practice. Solar Mosaic filed Chapter 11 in 2025 partly because of accumulating liability around it.

If your loan was funded by any of those lenders — or by Service Finance, GreenSky, or any other solar-specialized lender — there is a high probability your principal includes a dealer fee. This guide walks you through how to find it. Step by step. Ten minutes. Stick with me.

What You Will Need

Before you start, gather these documents. They are usually in a folder somewhere from your install — physical or digital. If you do not have them, request them in writing from your installer (a request that goes ignored is itself useful evidence).

• Sales proposal — the document the salesperson presented during the pitch. This typically lists the system size, projected savings, federal tax credit math, and total system price.
• Solar contract — the actual signed agreement with the installer.
• Loan agreement / TILA disclosure — the document from your lender (GoodLeap, Mosaic, Sunlight, Dividend, Service Finance) that includes the APR, finance charge, amount financed, and payment schedule.
• Pre-loan paperwork — any written quote, estimate, or pricing breakdown from before you signed financing.

If you cannot find the loan agreement, log in to your lender's customer portal — they almost always have it available for download.

Step 1: Find Your "Cash Price" or "System Cost" — 2 Minutes

Open your sales proposal. Look for any of the following labels:

• "System Price"
• "Total System Cost"
• "Cash Price"
• "Project Cost"
• "System Cost Before Tax Credit"
• "Total Investment"

Write down that number. Call it P (for Project cost). This is what the installer told you the system would cost.

If your sales proposal does not separately show this number — if it only shows "Monthly Payment" or jumps straight to financed terms — that is itself a red flag. The CFPB Issue Spotlight specifically called out this pattern: lenders and installers sometimes structure proposals to obscure the cash-vs-financed price difference.

Step 2: Find Your "Amount Financed" — 2 Minutes

Open your loan agreement. Look for the Truth in Lending Disclosure Statement — it should be on the first page or near the front of the document. The TILA disclosure is required by federal law to be in a specific format with specific labels.

Find the line labeled "Amount Financed". This is what the lender disclosed as the principal of your loan.

Write down that number. Call it L (for Loan principal).

If your TILA disclosure shows multiple amounts — "Amount Financed," "Total of Payments," "Total Sale Price" — make sure you are using the "Amount Financed" line. That is the figure that should equal what the lender actually advanced for your benefit.

Step 3: Calculate the Difference — 1 Minute

Subtract: L − P = D

D is your dealer fee.

If L equals P (the loan principal matches the system price), there is likely no dealer fee — or it is hidden somewhere else (more on that in Step 5).

If L exceeds P by 5 percent or more, you almost certainly have a dealer fee. Calculate it as a percentage: D / P × 100 = dealer fee percentage.

The CFPB documented dealer fees of 10 to 36 percent of cash price. The Minnesota AG investigation found GoodLeap averaged 19.32 percent across 853 Minnesota loans. If your dealer fee percentage falls within these ranges, your loan matches the documented industry pattern.

Step 4: Verify Against Your Lender's Pattern — 2 Minutes

Cross-reference your lender against the documented enforcement actions:

• GoodLeap — Named defendant in Minnesota AG lawsuit. CFPB-documented hidden dealer fees. Average 19.32% per loan in MN sample.
• Solar Mosaic — Named defendant in Minnesota AG lawsuit. Filed Chapter 11 in 2025. Named co-defendant in NY AG Attyx case (March 17, 2026).
• Sunlight Financial — Named defendant in Minnesota AG lawsuit. Filed bankruptcy in late 2024.
• Dividend Solar — Named defendant in Minnesota AG lawsuit.
• Service Finance — Same dealer fee structure documented in CFPB Issue Spotlight, though not yet a named AG defendant.
• WebBank — Named co-defendant in NY AG Attyx case. Acts as the chartered bank partner for Mosaic and others, providing the federal preemption shield for nationwide rate exports.
• GreenSky — CFPB Issue Spotlight noted similar structures; Goldman Sachs sold GreenSky in 2024 amid regulatory pressure.

If your lender appears on this list, your dealer fee finding aligns with documented industry practice. (Read the complete dealer fee breakdown for the legal background.)

Step 5: If Your Numbers Do Not Match Up — 2 Minutes

Sometimes the math does not work out cleanly because the installer and lender structured the documents to obscure the dealer fee. Common scenarios:

Scenario A: Sales proposal does not show a separate "cash price"

If your proposal only shows financed terms ("low monthly payment of $X" or "financed amount of $Y"), the cash price was deliberately not disclosed. Request it in writing from the installer. State that you are seeking the cash price for your specific system as it would have been quoted to a cash buyer. Refusal to disclose, or non-response, is itself evidence supporting your dealer fee misrepresentation claim.

Scenario B: Sales proposal shows the same number as the loan principal

If the proposal shows $50,000 and your loan principal is also $50,000, the installer presented the financed price as if it were the cash price. The cash price was probably $35,000 to $42,000 — but you were never told. The misrepresentation is that the financed price was presented as the price, when it actually included an undisclosed markup.

Scenario C: Installer is in bankruptcy

If your installer filed Chapter 11 (Sunnova, SunPower, Freedom Forever, Titan Solar, Pink Energy, Sunworks, Vision Solar in some markets), the cash price is often disclosed in their bankruptcy filings on PACER. Search for your installer's bankruptcy case, look for proof of claim documents, schedules of assets, or operating reports — these often contain pricing information that was not given to customers.

Scenario D: Loan documents missing or incomplete

If you cannot locate your loan agreement and the lender is non-responsive to requests, the CFPB consumer complaint database (consumerfinance.gov) is your route to escalation. File a complaint requesting the documents — federal lenders are required to respond.

Step 6: Document Your Findings — 1 Minute

What Your Numbers Likely Look Like

Based on the Minnesota AG investigation data and the CFPB Issue Spotlight, here is the typical pattern:

If Your Cash Price Was	Your Loan Principal Likely Is	Dealer Fee Range
$25,000	$28,000 – $34,000	$3,000 – $9,000 (12-36%)
$35,000	$40,000 – $48,000	$5,000 – $13,000 (14-37%)
$50,000	$57,000 – $68,000	$7,000 – $18,000 (14-36%)
$65,000	$74,000 – $88,000	$9,000 – $23,000 (14-35%)

Lower percentages (10-15%) typically reflect loans where the installer offered a smaller dealer fee in exchange for keeping more profit on their side. Higher percentages (25-36%) typically reflect cases where the installer offered an aggressive low advertised APR, with the lender requiring a larger dealer fee to subsidize that rate.

What to Do Next

If you found a dealer fee of 10 percent or more (you almost certainly did if your lender is GoodLeap, Mosaic, Sunlight, Dividend, or Service Finance), several legal pathways are available:

Path 1: TILA rescission claim — if the dealer fee should have been disclosed as a finance charge under 15 U.S.C. § 1605, the disclosed APR is wrong, opening the 3-year rescission window under 15 U.S.C. § 1635. (Read the complete TILA rescission breakdown.)

Path 2: FTC Holder Rule attack on the lender — under 16 C.F.R. § 433.2, the lender is liable for the joint scheme they designed with the installer. Recovery is capped at amounts paid but typically results in full balance forgiveness in settlement. (Read the FTC Holder Rule breakdown.)

Path 3: State UDAP claim — Texas DTPA (treble damages), California CLRA + UCL, NY GBL 349/350, NJ CFA (mandatory treble), MA 93A all reach this conduct.

Path 4: Common-law fraudulent inducement — backup theory, available in every state.

Path 5: Elder abuse statutes if 65+ — California Welfare and Institutions Code § 15610.30 and similar statutes in 40+ states multiply damages and add mandatory attorney's fees. (Read the elder abuse breakdown.)

The strongest cases stack three or four of these. Stacked, the typical outcome is dealer fee disgorgement plus principal reduction plus credit reporting cleanup — and in the strongest cases, full loan cancellation with the equipment retained on the roof.

Here Is What Actually Happens When We Take Your Case

We are not a referral mill. We review every case before we take it. If you meet the criteria — and most homeowners reading an article like this one do — here is what typically happens:

Outcome #1: Your contract gets completely canceled. You keep the system.

Read that again. That $30,000 loan, that $80,000 loan, that $150,000 loan — gone. Wiped. And the equipment on your roof? You keep it. It is yours. Hire a local electrician or solar tech to clean it up and tie it in properly, and you have got a functioning solar system for the cost of a service call.

Not a typo. That is the best-case outcome, and it is what we push for on every case we accept.

Outcome #2: Your loan gets massively reduced. Typically 40% to 60%.

Every case is different, but the pattern is consistent:

• A $150,000 loan knocked down to around $75,000
• A $70,000 loan cut to $35,000
• A $175,000 loan restructured to something you can actually live with

If we cannot completely kill the contract, we fight like hell to get the principal slashed — and we have a track record of doing it.

If we take your case and cannot deliver either outcome?

You get 40% of your fee back after we have exhausted every angle. That is our guarantee, in writing. Nobody else in this space puts that on paper. We do — because we only take cases we believe in.

The Bottom Line

Ten minutes of document review may be worth thousands of dollars to you. The CFPB and Minnesota Attorney General have done the heavy lifting of documenting the dealer fee practice industry-wide. Your job is just to verify the math on your specific loan.

Cash price minus loan principal equals dealer fee. If that number is 10 percent or more of the cash price, your loan fits the pattern that the CFPB called out and that state Attorneys General are actively enforcing against. The legal pathways are documented, the case law is developing, and the settlement framework is dominant: dealer fee disgorgement, principal reduction, full balance forgiveness in the strongest cases.

The equipment on your roof works. The financing structure was where the deception lived. Now you have the receipts.

Related Reading

• The Hidden Dealer Fee — How Lenders Added 30% to Your Loan
• 14 Legal Loopholes That Can Kill a Solar Contract
• FTC Holder Rule Explained — The Federal Law That Makes Your Lender Pay
• TILA Rescission for Solar Loans — The 3-Year Undo Button
• Elder Abuse + Solar Fraud — Enhanced Damages Explained
• GoodLeap Solar Loan Complaints — Complete Guide
• How to Cancel a Freedom Forever Contract After Bankruptcy
• Momentum Solar Complaints 2026