Making an off-grid move sounds easy, but you can’t bank on it

Our off-grid home.

[Editor’s note: I first published this opinion piece in the National Observer, January 29, 2021. In terms of obtaining a mortgage for an off-grid home, nothing has changed in the last two years since I first wrote this article.)

Leaving the grid isn’t as easy as packing a bag, moving to a piece of land, throwing up a couple of solar panels, and kicking back. Last March, as we began the process of buying an already built home that was off-grid in southwestern Nova Scotia, we didn’t anticipate the problem we’d encounter.

When we first saw the place online, both my wife and I were convinced someone would quickly snap it up. It was beyond scenic; with its warm wood interior, high ceiling, and open space, it epitomized cabin porn. On the real estate website it was listed on, the house was racking up hundreds of hits daily. Surely, it wouldn’t stay on the market long enough for us to get it; after all, we had to wait a year before we could realistically make an offer on it.

But the house didn’t move, and we began to rationalize its problems. With only one bedroom and one bathroom, and the rest of the property open concept, we figured the house wasn’t suitable for a family, and it was likely too expensive for a first-time buyer.

As well, the property sat far back in the woods, its front yard a weedy, uncared-for section of scrub littered with torn stumps from logging on the land over a decade ago. That would discourage prospective purchasers with money who would, if they’re intending to fork over a sizeable amount, prefer that everything be move-in ready.

As it turned out, none of those were the real reasons the home continued to sit on the market at a time when real estate was in short supply, and houses in high demand. Rather, it’s because of those archaic and conservative institutions known as banks. Not one is willing to give a mortgage to an off-grid house.

I called our bank to ask about getting a mortgage on the house; this is, after all, an institution that has featured solar panels previously and prominently in its advertising.

The adviser I spoke with flat out told me: No, a mortgage was out of the question. I pointed out that most of our finances were invested with the bank, including our current mortgage for our suburban home. Nope. Not possible. Every other bank and credit union responded the same way.

We’re not the only ones who faced that conundrum. In 2018 on the greenbuildingadvisor.com forum, a prospective offgridder wrote: “I have my heart set on an off-grid house in Ontario, Canada. I thought it would be a relatively easy purchase but every mortgage broker that has looked into it has come back saying that the bank will not finance an off-grid house. I don’t know if it’s worth it to try again, but that means multiple credit checks, which is not the best, either.”

One response she received on the forum was: “… Forget about CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation), despite what they might say, they are not interested in off-grid homes. It's about marketability. They don't care about sustainability or any green initiatives. We just found that out trying to get pre-approved to buy an off-grid post-and-beam, straw bale home. It's always about the money. Don't fool yourself.”

According to a mortgage broker who looked into financing for us, the issue is the banks look at the house as a liability that in the case of a foreclosure, they wouldn’t be able to unload again. Loans Canada, another mortgage broker, backs up this assertion, pointing out lenders look at mortgages for rural properties as “among the riskiest to banks due to a number of factors,” including the fact such a property may be harder to resell because of its remote location.

The obstinance of the financial institutions to finance such properties runs in the face of rationality and common sense as more people look to make the leap to off-grid living. Off Grid Nova Scotia, a Facebook group I help administer, grew from some 900 members in January 2020 to 3,800 members a year later [and which now stands closer to 7,500 members as of today]. Unease over the state of American politics, and the pandemic have helped propel interest in the off-grid lifestyle.

The position of banks on off-grid mortgages also contradicts the stance of their own former leader, economist Mark Carney, who served as governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013. Carney has made it his mission to speak out openly about the climate crisis, and the steps financial institutions and other businesses should be taking to mitigate it.

In September 2019, during the UN secretary general’s Climate Action Summit, Carney gave a now-famous speech titled Insurance, Risk Financing and Development: Driving Public Private Action for Climate. “To conclude, a financial market in the transition to a 1.5 C world is being built, but we need to move much faster. Now it’s time for a steep change to bring the reporting, risk management and return optimization of sustainable finance into everyday, mainstream, financial decision-making. Ultimately, the speed with which the new sustainable financial system develops will be decided by the ambitions of your climate policies,” Carney —- who has since been named the United Nations’ special envoy for climate action and finance — told the UN.

Obviously, the banks ignored Carney’s advice. Nor did they do us any favours. Ultimately, we financed the house on our own through the sale of our home in a bedroom community of Halifax, by cashing in an RRSP, and relying on a loan from a family member to make up the difference. While I can’t tell you the definitive change in our ecological footprint, I can tell you it’s making a big difference.

We have removed the bulk of fossil fuels from our home. The exceptions are the propane-fired range, and the propane gas clothes dryer. Our water is a gravity-fed system from the brook out back; everything else is run off of solar or wood heat. We also increased our green practices markedly after moving to the house, installing garden beds to grow our own food, getting chickens, using coffee grounds and eggshells for the gardens, saving paper and cardboard waste as starter for the stove, and so on.

Magnify these actions by the number of people willing to go off-grid, and suddenly we might see a real change in emissions into the atmosphere. But for that to happen, the banks are going to have to step up and assist people with the financing. The banks might have to do something revolutionary: Instead of looking out for their bottom line and profit margins, they will have to become service-oriented, helping people realize their green dreams while contributing to a more sustainable future. Imagine that.

In fact, it only makes sense as we watch the planet heat up more with every passing year that any new home or building should be mandated to be off-grid, not just rurally, but particularly in the urban centres. Not only that, but incentive programs should be set in place to convert existing properties, and banks directed to help underwrite the mortgages. While power utilities undoubtedly wouldn’t favour such a development, such policies would act as tremendous catalysts of change, helping reduce carbon emissions, and, perhaps, extending the life of our green planet that much longer.

And you still can’t bank on an off-grid mortgage

Two years after I wrote the story above, securing a mortgage for an off-grid home is still one of the most frequent questions I see popping up on sites devoted to the lifestyle. The bad news is it doesn’t appear that it’s still any easier to secure one.

Given current interest rates, and everything else, it’s probably no great surprise that the off-grid market is out of luck. The banks are dealing with so much risk in the market that they’re not even interested in extending a mortgage to an even riskier investment that is off-grid.

A couple of people said the Royal Bank is backing off-grid. But as far as I can tell (since the individuals in the off-grid FB I help administrate couldn’t be bothered to reply to a writer’s query on this) it’s the same old mortgage meant to finance 95 percent of a vacation home. It’s still not an off-grid specific mortgage and likely comes with a higher interest rate.

In Ontario, a financial services agency called Pillar will back up to 80 percent of an unconventional home. A “solution-based lender,” I suspect it comes with high interest rates as well.

The bottom line is a specific off-grid mortgage product doesn’t exist yet, and if you do find a product that will back your home be prepared to pay a premium for it - still a less than ideal solution.

What’s local: diving with sharks

Photo courtesy of OCEAERCH.

A tourism company is bringing cages to the waters off the South Shore, enabling individuals to experience the opportunity to view great white sharks underwater and up close. CBC reports that “Atlantic Shark Expeditions will run daily trips from Liverpool from Aug. 1 to the end of October. Customers will pay $395 each to go on the daylong trips, and can choose to view sharks from the boat or from a cage, where they will wear a wetsuit and use a snorkel.”

Previously considered rare in Atlantic Canadian waters, more recent sightings indicate a growing presence potentially due to climate change, population recovery and/or increasing pinpointed prey, according to the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

The global non-profit organization OCEAERCH has carried out four research trips to Nova Scotia, sampling, tagging and releasing 10 white sharks. The group says the data it has collected support 24 different science projects, helping form a complete picture of the ecology, behaviour, and health of the white shark in Northwest Atlantic Ocean.

OCEAERCH claims its Northwest Atlantic White Shark Study is the “most comprehensive research study that has ever been done on a white shark population in the world and the data collected from the sharks tagged and sampled on our expeditions will support a variety of research projects including full health assessments, bacterial and microbiome studies and microplastic toxin exposure. In addition, three tags have been added to each shark which will allow scientists to track their long term movement and migration patterns.”

Is diving with sharks ethical?

Photo courtesy of OCEAERCH.

After two decades, the Mexican government ended shark diving with an indefinite ban on Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Baja California, reported The Smithsonian Magazine. The new rules were put in place because of reportedly bad practices in the industry. The latter included: mishandling the bait used to attract sharks; tourists and film crews swimming outside of cages; drones flying over seal colonies; and pollutant dumping, among other things.

Two incidents of sharks becoming trapped in cages, in one instance resulting in death and the other in a serious injury to the sharks, did not help things.

Proponents of shark diving told the publication that the ban will limit research into great white sharks - where cage-diving charter boats offer an easy, cost-effective way for scientists to learn more about the animals - and that without tour operators, poachers will move in and illegally hunt the sharks for their jaws and fins.

In a 2020 paper in Nature, researchers studying the sharks from on board tourist boats in Guadalupe Island studied the reaction of the sharks to four different types of bait. Their finding was “The results suggest that current ecotourism has no effect on the conditioning of the white sharks, and that all baits have a similar effectiveness for attracting the sharks. However, a different behavioural pattern was observed when fresh bait and chum were used, which could increase the potential of accidents during ecotourism.”

Significantly, the authors wrote: “Wildlife regulations during ecotourism are essential for the prevention of accidents between humans and sharks. The limited vigilance in Guadalupe Island, along with a lack of scientific evidence supporting some of the unfollowed regulations, were part of the cause for several accidents that occurred in 2016 and the years before, where several sharks and divers were harmed during ecotourism44, including the recent death of a white shark in 2019.”

Added the researchers: “Although these situations are scarce and could not be avoided in some cases, the information regarding the behaviour to specific type of baits is needed for the prevention of accidents through science-based decisions.”

Photo courtesy of OCEAERCH.

The tourism operator who is bringing shark cage diving to Nova Scotia promises that “in addition to helping tourists tick an item off their bucket lists, [Neil] Hammerschlag will be using the expeditions to research how great whites are influenced by human activity and climate change, and to learn more about how their population is changing over time and what the animals are doing in Nova Scotia.

“He plans to tag sharks, build up an identification database, take biopsies for ecotoxicology studies and conduct ultrasounds on the animals as they swim.”

All of which is good and fine, but something OCEAERCH already does without attracting the sharks to a tourist cage diving operation.

What I’m reading

Let it be said: Amor Towles is a fantastic writer. He has a way of just instantly pulling you into a story. That said, so far The Lincoln Highway is not the picaresque adventure I was expecting. Maybe it’s because of the map inside the cover that details the United States’ first national roadway stretching from New York to San Francisco. But without spoiling the story for you, the adventures that Emmett and his younger brother Billy have diverge dramatically from the sort of thing I anticipated. That’s not a bad thing; after all, books should surprise, and this one does. And half-way through I am certainly eager to continue my journey with the two brothers and see where they - and the book - ends up.