Why is the answer 'never'?

If rent is low relative to the mortgage, expected home appreciation is modest, and stock-market returns are high, renting can win for the entire horizon. Try raising the home-appreciation assumption or lowering the assumed market return to see how sensitive the answer is.

What's a realistic home-appreciation rate?

Long-run US averages are roughly 3–4% per year, close to inflation. Some metros run hotter or cooler than that for stretches. Don't assume the last decade's rate continues forever.

Mortgage vs Rent Calculator

Find your buy-vs-rent break-even point in months.

Home price

Down payment %

Mortgage rate %/yr

Term (years)

Monthly rent (today)

Rent growth %/yr

Home appreciation %/yr

Market return %/yr

Property tax %/yr

Insurance %/yr

Maintenance %/yr

Horizon (years)

Monthly mortgage (P&I)

Monthly extras (tax/ins/maint)

Break-even

Home value at horizon

Heuristic only. Excludes income-tax effects (mortgage interest deduction, capital-gains exclusion), closing costs, HOA, and the volatility of actual market returns. Use for ballpark intuition, not financial advice.

Enter a home price, mortgage terms and your local rent. We compute the break-even month - when the cumulative cost of buying (mortgage + taxes + insurance + maintenance, less the equity you build) first falls below the cumulative cost of renting (rent paid + opportunity cost of investing your down payment).

How to use it

Enter the numbers you know
Home price, down payment, mortgage rate, your current rent.
Set the assumptions
Rent growth, home appreciation, market return on the alternative investment. Defaults are conservative long-run averages.
Read the break-even
The break-even month tells you how long you'd need to stay in the home for buying to beat renting under these assumptions. Re-run with different assumptions to test robustness.

What is it?

A mortgage-vs-rent calculator compares the lifetime cost of owning a home to the lifetime cost of renting an equivalent home, including the opportunity cost of the down payment if invested instead. The output is a break-even horizon - the point in months at which buying becomes cheaper than renting. Before that horizon, renting wins; after, buying wins.

When to use it

Before signing a mortgage, especially when relocating to a city where you might leave within a few years. Useful for sensitivity analysis: tweak assumptions about home appreciation, rent growth and stock returns to see how robust your break-even is to bad luck. Also useful for evaluating a relocation offer where the housing options materially differ.

Common mistakes

Forgetting transaction costs. Closing costs (~3% on purchase, ~6% on sale) push the break-even out by years. Ignoring maintenance - 1% of home value per year is the canonical rule, and it bites. Assuming rent grows slowly when it has historically grown faster than CPI in many cities. And the biggest one: treating the calculator's output as a prediction rather than a sensitivity tool.

FAQ

Why is the answer 'never'?: If rent is low relative to the mortgage, expected home appreciation is modest, and stock-market returns are high, renting can win for the entire horizon. Try raising the home-appreciation assumption or lowering the assumed market return to see how sensitive the answer is.
What's a realistic home-appreciation rate?: Long-run US averages are roughly 3–4% per year, close to inflation. Some metros run hotter or cooler than that for stretches. Don't assume the last decade's rate continues forever.