Weighing the ledger…
A rent vs buy calculator with the math showing. Owning (mortgage, taxes, maintenance, appreciation, equity) in one column; renting + investing the down payment in the other. A clear break-even year — or the verdict that buying doesn’t beat renting at this horizon.
Fill in the purchase details, the rent you’d otherwise pay, and an expected return on the invested alternative. We project both paths forward month-by-month, subtract equity (and the invested portfolio) on exit, and tell you the year buying starts to win.
Positive values mean buying wins by that amount; negative values mean renting wins. Appreciation is the single biggest swing factor — a 1% change over ten years reshapes the answer by tens of thousands.
| Year | Home value | Buy equity | Buy net cost | Rent portfolio | Rent net cost | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $463,500.00 | $107,523.81 | $62,723.47 | $120,995.22 | -$90,861.53 | Rent |
| 2 | $477,405.00 | $125,722.11 | $84,645.71 | $139,183.68 | -$80,319.68 | Rent |
| 3 | $491,727.15 | $144,625.08 | $106,247.73 | $158,097.96 | -$68,480.04 | Rent |
| 4 | $506,478.96 | $164,264.50 | $127,509.28 | $177,772.46 | -$56,484.00 | Rent |
| 5 | $521,673.33 | $184,673.81 | $148,408.82 | $198,243.47 | -$44,340.36 | Rent |
| 6 | $537,323.53 | $205,888.21 | $168,923.38 | $219,549.33 | -$32,059.13 | Rent |
| 7 | $553,443.24 | $227,944.76 | $189,028.50 | $241,730.54 | -$19,651.63 | Rent |
| 8 | $570,046.54 | $250,882.50 | $208,698.12 | $264,829.88 | -$7,130.60 | Rent |
| 9 | $587,147.93 | $274,742.57 | $227,904.46 | $288,892.59 | $7,343.17 | Rent |
| 10 | $604,762.37 | $299,568.32 | $246,617.96 | $313,966.50 | $23,102.08 | Rent |
Most rent vs buy calculators pick a side: either they ignore the invested alternative (making buying always look better because the renter’s down payment just vanishes) or they ignore equity and selling costs (making renting always look better by treating the mortgage as pure expense). The honest comparison treats each path as “what does it cost if I exit at year N” — buy: cumulative outflows minus (home value − mortgage balance − selling cost); rent: cumulative outflows minus (portfolio − tax on gains). Break-even is the first year where buying wins that comparison. This one runs the comparison month-by-month, makes the invested-alternative explicit, and puts an appreciation sensitivity strip right next to the result so you can see how fragile the answer is to the one assumption you’re most likely to be wrong about. Nothing leaves your browser.