mattwnz:

 

I know a house that sold which had solar panels, but the owners took them with them when they sold it, as they were paying them off over 20 years. . 

 

That must have been a rental thing with solar zero or similar? If you buy the panels outright your talking $12-$16k for a 5kW system + diverter and smart meter that's roof mounted. More than half the cost is likely to be the installation so if your moving them you are going to have to eat up a large proportion of that cost getting them removed from the house and reinstalled on the new house. It makes much more sense (if your not with Solar zero) to sell the solar panels as part of the house, will help bump up the sale price a bit when people see the house generates 6,000kWhs of it's own power each year...

Then have a new system with more modern higher Watt panels installed on the new place. Only exception to this might be if you have a ground mounted system that you can pack up easily and take with you...