Should you buy a home right now, or keep renting?
This is the highest-value financial question most people in their 20s and 30s actually ask — and it almost never has a one-word answer. Buying is usually a bad trade if you'll move again in three years, and usually a good one if you'll stay fifteen. The real lesson here isn't "buy" or "rent" — it's where the crossover sits, and how much it moves when rates, rent, or how long you stay change.
The true cost of a home isn't the price
A mortgage payment is the visible part. Property tax, insurance, maintenance, HOA dues, and — easy to forget — the money tied up in a down payment that could otherwise be invested, are the rest of it. That last piece matters more than it looks: the calculator below assumes the renter invests every dollar of the down payment and closing costs they didn't spend, from day one.
The comparison
Picture two people who start with the exact same amount of cash. One buys a home with it; the other invests it and rents instead, adding to that investment every month renting is the cheaper option. Drag anything below and watch both paths update.
A $450,000 home with 20% down at 6.5%, versus renting a comparable place at $2,500/month. Both sides start with the same $103,500 in cash.
How much does each assumption actually matter?
Nudge each input up and down on its own, holding everything else fixed, and measure how much the year-30 net-worth gap between buying and renting moves. Longer bars are the assumptions worth double-checking; short ones barely change the answer.
Each bar shows how much the buy-vs-rent net-worth gap moves when that one assumption is nudged up or down, holding everything else constant. Longer bars matter more; flat bars barely move the answer.
Simplifications: property tax and maintenance scale with the appreciating home value; insurance and HOA escalate with general inflation; capital gains rate is flat and illustrative; 30-year fixed mortgage; PMI applied below 20% equity at an illustrative rate; the mortgage-interest/ property-tax deduction assumes no other itemized deductions.
What the model does and doesn't account for
It includes mortgage amortization, PMI while your equity is under 20%, property tax and insurance that scale with the home's value and inflation, closing costs on both the purchase and an eventual sale, the §121 exclusion that shields home-sale gains from capital-gains tax up to $250k (single) or $500k (married), rent inflation, and the tax benefit of itemizing mortgage interest and property tax against the standard deduction. It assumes a 30-year fixed mortgage and a flat, illustrative capital-gains rate, and it only accounts for the mortgage-interest/property-tax deduction — not any other itemized deductions a household might already have. See the About & methodology page for the full model.