Buy vs rent: when does owning actually beat renting?
You're choosing between buying a $400,000 house at 6.5% with 20% down, or renting at $2,200/month and investing the difference. We model both for 10 years using real cost-of-ownership numbers (taxes, maintenance, insurance) — not the realtor pitch.
| Buy ($400K house, 20% down, 6.5%) | Rent + invest the difference | |
|---|---|---|
| Final balance | $119,267 | $343,320 |
| Total contributions | $80,000 | $188,000 |
| Total interest | +$39,267 | +$155,320 |
Renting + investing usually wins on raw wealth in years 1–7 (high mortgage interest + transaction costs). Buying typically pulls ahead from year 8 onward as you build equity and rent inflation outpaces fixed mortgage payments. Below 5 years, almost always rent. Above 10 years, almost always buy. The middle is where your local market and lifestyle weight the answer.
Which is right for you?
Key takeaways
- True cost of owning is roughly 1.5× the mortgage payment (taxes, maintenance, insurance, HOA).
- Selling costs (5-8% of sale price) erase years of equity gains for short-term owners.
- Renting is not 'throwing money away' — owning has its own large recurring costs that build no equity (taxes, maintenance, interest in early years).
FAQ
What about the tax deduction on mortgage interest?
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Doesn't a house always go up in value?
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How do I figure out the breakeven year for my situation?
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How to think about this comparison
Most personal-finance decisions are not about finding the single optimal answer. They are about choosing a path that you can stick with for ten, twenty, or thirty years through markets that rise and fall, jobs that change, family that grows, and goals that shift. The numbers in the calculator above show one mathematically optimal answer under a fixed set of assumptions. But the right answer for you also depends on how much volatility you can absorb without selling at a bad time, how much discipline you have for monthly automation, and how much you value flexibility versus certainty.
When the gap between two options is small — say less than five percent over the modeled time horizon — the math is essentially a tie. In a tie, behavior wins. Pick the path you will actually execute every month for the next decade, because a slightly suboptimal plan you complete beats a theoretically optimal plan you abandon. When the gap is large — twenty percent or more — the math becomes the dominant factor, and you should think hard about why you would intentionally choose the smaller number.
Most readers underestimate three things when running comparisons like this. First: inflation. A nominal forty-thousand-dollar gap in thirty years is worth roughly half that in today's purchasing power at three-percent inflation. Always check the real-value column. Second: taxes. Pre-tax dollars in a traditional account are not equivalent to post-tax dollars in a Roth or taxable account; the comparison should equalize by reducing pre-tax balances by your expected retirement tax rate. Third: sequence-of-returns risk. A bad year early in retirement damages a portfolio far more than the same bad year twenty-five years in. Calculators that assume constant returns hide this. Run a Monte Carlo with your real plan before committing.
For deeper context on the math behind these comparisons, see our pillar guide on compound interest and the original-research datasets at snowballr.io/data. To run multiple variations side-by-side, use the scenarios hub. For a single canonical reference of the numbers and primary sources we cite throughout the site, see Fast Facts.
Editorial standards, sources, and disclaimer
Every number on this page is generated client-side from the formulas published in our methodology documentation; no values are pre-computed, cached, or pulled from third-party APIs. The closed-form math matches the version used by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's consumer-investor portal at Investor.gov, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's comparison tools, and major retirement-planning textbooks (Bogle, Bengen, Trinity, Vanguard internal research).
Historical return assumptions are drawn from NYU Stern's long-run dataset (Aswath Damodaran), Robert Shiller's S&P 500 dataset at Yale, and the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) repository for interest rates and inflation. Mortgage rate references come from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS); consumer credit and household debt references from the New York Federal Reserve's Household Debt and Credit Report. Where this comparison cites tax brackets, contribution limits, or required minimum distribution rules, the figures match the most recent IRS publications and Notice updates at the time of the latest editorial review.
Snowballr is an independent, ad-supported publication. We do not sell financial products, accept affiliate commissions on banks, brokerages, or loan companies, or take payment for editorial placement. Our editorial standards describe how we source, fact-check, and update every calculator and comparison. The full master sources index at /sources lists every primary reference behind a quantitative claim on the site, organized by topic. For corrections, missing nuance, or fact-checking inquiries, reach us via the contact page.
This comparison is provided for educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment, tax, accounting, legal, or financial-planning advice and should not be the sole basis for any decision about your money. Outcomes depend on assumptions that will differ in real life — returns are not guaranteed, market downturns extend recovery timelines, fees and taxes reduce realized growth, and inflation erodes the real purchasing power of nominal balances. Before acting on any output here, consult a fiduciary financial advisor and a licensed tax professional, as appropriate to your situation. Past performance does not guarantee future results.