Rent vs buy home calculator

Whether to buy a home or keep renting is one of the biggest financial decisions people make, and the honest comparison is more subtle than “rent is dead money”. This calculator weighs the full cost of buying — the mortgage, property taxes, maintenance and the home’s expected appreciation, and the equity you build — against the cost of renting plus the opportunity cost of investing your down payment instead.

That opportunity cost is the factor casual comparisons miss: the large sum tied up in a down payment could otherwise be invested, so buying only wins once its benefits outweigh what that money would have earned elsewhere. The calculator finds the break-even horizon — how long you must stay for buying to come out ahead.

It runs in your browser, so your figures stay private. The outcome is sensitive to assumptions about appreciation, rent inflation and investment returns, none of which are certain, so use it to understand the drivers of the decision rather than as a definitive verdict.