HELP! Mysterious lien on our house! : personalfinance

OP is trying to do a HELOC to pay for his wedding () and discovers the 0% down solar panels he had installed (which only cost $86k) actually triggered a $410k PACE lien. A PACE lien is from a loan program that the Feds setup a while ago which is rife with scammers. To the point that some municipalities have outright gotten rid of the program. The way the scam goes is that contractor bids a job to replace windows, tells the customer you won't have to pay anything up front you can just do a PACE loan, jacks up the fees, and sometimes doesn't even bother to complete the work. It's hard to tell how the lien is for $410k since the OP has no idea what's going on. Maybe it was really a lease or the lien amount is for the loan over 30 years or something. These are first priority liens too, which means they get paid before the mortgage.

OP explaining how he spent $86k on solar panels:

It was a large amount of panels. 49 total. We have multiple people living with us, plus a relative that stayed with us during the quarantine year. We were all home for almost a year eating up energy usage. The solar companies base your panel needs off of the past year usage, so I thought it was a great time to get a system built to absolutely overproduce. In my state you can't add panels past your usage or it's considered "energy farming". God forbid we produced more.

OP resisting cancelling the $20k wedding:

Obviously we'd all love to have disposable income to throw ten thousand dollars around from a safety net. Unfortunately I'm in the 99% of the world that doesn't. We can certainly save some extra until then, but there is in reality only two months until all the payments are due. A good chunk of our extra money is tied up in a new business venture. Thought since we've been paying our mortgage down like animals and have so much equity, why not borrow some cash at a 4% rate. I can understand your not coming at us as snarky. Please understand I'm not coming back in a defensive insulted way. I'm not sure where you live, but where we are, weddings are jacked up 3,000% of value for everything. It's impressive to both of us how much we saved towards it in just a year and a half.

Anyway, we'd be just fine taking a HELOC and for 9/10K and then paying it right off with wedding gift money. Or blowing that money for no reason and still be fine paying the HELOC off in 5 or 6 months.

And as a side note, /r/legaladvice providing no value at all and just says get a lawyer: https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/xebidg/mysterious_410k_hud_lein_on_my_house/