Rent vs. Buy

The typical renter will wonder at some point whether money isn’t being thrown down the drain by not owning a home. Use this calculator to help determine whether renting or buying is the best financial move to make.

To use the calculator, enter some of the following information (the more information that you’re able to enter, the more accurate the computations will be):

Rent Information: Monthly Rent and Annual Rent Increase (percentage).
Property Information: Home Value, Annual Maintenance, Annual Appreciation, Years Before Sell and Selling Cost.
Loan Information: Amount (of mortgage), Interest Rate, Length (in years) and Points (percentage).
Taxes and Insurance Information (choose dollars or percentage): Your Tax Rate, Annual Taxes, Annual Insurance and Annual PMI.

The calculator can also produce a PDF output file for download, and you can click the check box to view the Schedule Table for the time frame selected. The Schedule Table fields include: Number (of payment month), Interest, Principal, PMI and Balance. It also shows totals for every field after each year of the mortgage.

Input Information

Rent Info
Monthly Rent :	($)
Annual Rent Increase :	(%)
Property Information
Home Value :	($)
Annual Maintenance :	($)
Annual Appreciation :	(%)
Years Before Sell :	(Yrs)
Selling Cost :	(%)
Loan Information
Amount :	($)
Interest Rate :	(%)
Length :	(Yrs)
Points :	(%)
Taxes And Insurance Information
Your Tax Rate :	(%)
Annual Taxes :	($) (%)
Annual Insurance :	($) (%)
Annual PMI :	($) (%)
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Show Schedule Table

Financial Analysis

	Rent	Buy
Taxes and Insurance :	$0.00	$22,500.00
Total PMI :	$0.00	$3,125.00
Total Maintenance :	$0.00	$4,500.00
Total Payments :	$51,996.70	$108,372.10
Average Monthly Payment :	$866.61	$1,806.20
Monthly Rent Savings :	$939.59
Tax Savings :	$0.00	$4,550.00
Total Rent Savings :	$56,375.40
House Appreciation Value :	$382,884.47
Proceeds Minus Costs :	$356,082.56
Loan Balance :	$228,745.59
Equity Appreciation :	$127,336.96
Home Purchase Benefits :	$70,961.56