Interactive

Should you buy, or keep renting?

Not whether you can afford the payment — whether buying leaves you better off than renting and investing the difference. The answer is a year, not a yes.

Analyzing this as

Rent it out to a tenantDoes the rent cover the costs? You get a verdict.Switch

Live in it myselfBetter off buying, or renting? You get a year.

Import a deal

Use a property that's for sale. A “for rent” listing has a monthly rent but no purchase price, so there's nothing to buy and nothing to work out.

A link fills in the address. Copied text fills in the price and size too. Whatever it misses, you can type — it's never more than a number or two.

Nothing is scraped: the page is read in your browser, and only the address is ever sent to us.

The two numbers that decide it

What the house costs, and what you’d pay in rent if you didn’t buy it. Everything else has a default you can change below.

Purchase price

Rent you'd pay instead

What you pay now, or what a place like this rents for nearby

State

Property tax is the cost that decides this more often than the price does — it runs from 0.29% of value a year in Hawaii to 1.88% in New Jersey.

Adjust the assumptions20% down · 6.67% · 3.5% growth

Down payment

Interest rate

Home size

sq ft

HOA

Home appreciation

%/yr

Investment return

%/yr

Assumes 7% to sell and 2% to buy, rent rising 3% a year, and that a renter invests the down payment and closing costs rather than spending them. Change the last two assumptions above and watch the answer move — it moves a lot, which is the honest finding.

The crossover

Buying pulls ahead in year 16.

Sell before then and renting would have left you better off, because 7% to sell and 2% to buy have to be earned back first. Stay longer and buying wins by more every year.

How much rests on that rent

Quite a lot. At $1,920/mo it’s never inside 30 years; at $2,880/mo it’s year 6. This is the number worth checking against two real listings before you trust the year above.

That’s the answer across 20% either side of the rent you entered. Rent is an estimate — it moves with the condition of the place, the month you sign, and what the landlord will take. Everything else on this page is a rate or a price you can look up.

Net worth if you buyNet worth if you rent and invest

Owning costs: $3,502/mo; vs $2,400/mo to rent
Cash to close: $99,000; down payment plus closing costs
After 10 years: -$27,145; behind by buying
After 30 years: $178,725; loan fully paid off

Appreciation and investment returns are assumptions, not forecasts. The crossover moves several years on plausible changes to either — treat it as “year three or year nineteen”, not as a date.

Thinking of renting it out instead?