Rent vs Buy Calculator

Skycally's Rent vs Buy Calculator answers the one question that actually matters when you're weighing a home purchase against staying a renter: how many years would you need to live in the home before buying beats renting once every real cost is included? A simple 'mortgage vs rent' monthly-payment comparison — the one most quick calculators show — hides the answer, because a buyer's monthly payment ignores the down payment sitting in the home instead of earning market returns, the yearly drip of maintenance and property tax, and the 6–8% of the sale price that goes to agent commissions and closing on the way out. This tool works the way serious analyses like the New York Times' rent-vs-buy calculator do: it tracks a buyer's net position (home value minus mortgage balance minus selling costs minus total cash paid in) against a renter's net position (invested portfolio minus total rent paid), across every year from 1 to 30, and surfaces the exact year they cross.

The biggest reason simpler calculators mislead is the opportunity cost of the down payment. A $90,000 down payment plus $13,500 of closing costs isn't just a one-time expense — it's roughly $103,500 that a renter could have kept in a low-cost index fund. At a 6% long-term return, that seed alone grows to nearly $186,000 in ten years without contributing another dollar. Any honest comparison has to credit the renter with that growth (and with the difference each month when buying costs more than renting), and any honest comparison has to charge the buyer for maintenance (roughly 1% of home value every year), for buying closing costs (2–4% of price), and for selling costs at exit (6–8% of sale price combined agent commission and closing). Skip any of these and buying looks artificially good; include them and the crossover shifts by years, sometimes decades.

Home appreciation, rent growth, and investment return are the three assumptions that swing the answer the most, and unlike some calculators we refuse to bury them as fixed constants. Move the appreciation slider from 3% to 5% and buying pulls ahead by years; drop it to 1% and the crossover often disappears entirely inside a 30-year window. Rent growth works the other way — the faster rent rises, the sooner buying wins, because a fixed-rate mortgage payment doesn't inflate the way rent does. And investment return sets the bar the buyer's equity has to clear: at 4%, buying looks great; at 8%, the invested down payment is a genuinely tough opponent. Because the future values of these three inputs are honestly unknowable, the point isn't to guess them exactly — it's to see how sensitive your specific breakeven year is to reasonable ranges, and to make the decision knowing which assumption it hangs on.

This calculator fits alongside Skycally's other financial planning tools. Once you've settled on a home price and rate here, the Mortgage Calculator will show you the exact monthly payment and full amortization schedule for that scenario. If the invested-down-payment side of the comparison keeps winning, the Compound Interest Calculator lets you model what that same capital could grow to over 20 or 30 years at different return rates. And before you commit to any monthly housing cost the model implies, the Paycheck Calculator will show you what your actual take-home pay looks like after federal tax, state tax, and FICA — the real number that has to comfortably absorb the payment, taxes, insurance, and maintenance on top.