HERO Launches in Collier County, Bringing PACE Industry's Strongest Consumer Protections to Southwest Florida

NAPLES, Fla., Oct. 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 154,000 homes in Collier County now have access to HERO Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), an innovative financing option that empowers homeowners to make energy-efficient, renewable-energy, and hurricane-resiliency improvements to their homes. HERO offers property owners greater flexibility to pay for eligible upgrades and repairs over time as an additional, voluntary line item on their property taxes – at a fixed interest rate, the lowest of any PACE provider in Florida, with no upfront costs.

Collier County sustained significant damage due to Hurricane Irma, with estimates exceeding $320 million in unincorporated areas alone. As a public-private resource, HERO can quickly provide a financing option for residents for storm-related repairs and preparation for future storms, including offering a vetted list of home improvement contractors with strong consumer records. HERO brings the highest level of consumer protection in the PACE industry, including safeguards such as live, recorded telephone calls to confirm financing terms with homeowners and a guarantee that contractors do not get paid until homeowners certify that a project is done to their satisfaction. HERO uses a data-driven contractor quality rating system that tracks customer satisfaction in real-time and removes contractors that fail to maintain excellent or good ratings. 

With its launch in Collier County, HERO is now available to over 1.9 million Florida homeowners. HERO is a public-private partnership formed between participating Florida cities and counties, the Florida Development Finance Corporation (FDFC) and Renovate America, the nation's largest PACE financing provider. PACE financing benefits Florida communities by stimulating home renovation activity, which increases demand for contractor services and boosts the local economy – all at no cost to local government budgets.

"PACE is an indispensable resource that can help ease the burden and anxiety that so many of our friends and neighbors feel following the storm," said George Garner, owner and founder of NEXT Plumbing, which offers HERO-eligible projects, such as tankless and high efficiency water heaters, to homeowners from Naples to Sarasota. "I applaud Collier's commitment to giving Southwest Florida homeowners much-needed protections and options to decide what is right for their property when it comes to energy-efficient repairs and upgrades."

Since HERO launched six years ago, over 105,000 homeowners have used it to finance more than $2.6 billion in energy and efficiency improvements throughout the United States. Local contractors interested in learning more about HERO and/or becoming a registered HERO provider should visit www.renovateamerica.com/contractors.

Florida homeowners who want to be notified when HERO becomes available in their area should visit www.renovateamerica.com/financing/hero/communities.

About Renovate America
Renovate America offers a tech-enabled financing platform for home improvements that empowers communities to modernize and make their housing stock more efficient, while giving small businesses the tools they need to grow. In addition to financing home improvements through an unsecured lending product, Benji, Renovate America offers communities HERO financing. HERO is the leading residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program in the U.S. and has been used by over 105,000 homes to make energy and efficiency improvements. It is estimated that HERO is on track to save billions of dollars in energy and water bills, and has created over 23,000 local trade jobs that cannot be offshored or automated. Renovate America has built the world's largest green bond platform, with a volume of originations that enables securitization of HERO PACE bonds multiple times a year, attracting international investment to meet U.S. clean-energy objectives.

SOURCE Renovate America