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Buy vs Rent Calculator · 25 Cities · 2026

Buy or Rent? The 30-Year Honest Answer

Buy vs Rent Calculator 2026

Real market data for 25 cities worldwide. Appreciation rates, costs, breakeven point. No spin — just the math.

🌍 Select Your City
Choose a city to load real local market data — or adjust the numbers manually below.
🏠 Buying BUY
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$
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%/yr
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%/yr
🏢 Renting RENT
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%/yr
%/yr
years
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Buy Net Worth
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Rent + Invest
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Breakeven Year
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When buying pulls ahead
Total Buying Cost
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All-in over period
Total Renting Cost
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All-in over period
Home Value
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30-Year Net Worth Comparison
Buying vs. Renting + Investing the difference
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📊 How This Works

We model the true long-term cost of buying vs renting using your specific inputs. The buy scenario includes mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance (1% annually), and opportunity cost of down payment. The rent scenario includes rent increases (3% annually) and investment returns on the down payment.

📋 Assumptions & Data Sources

Home appreciation: 3.5%/year. Investment return on down payment: 7%/year (S&P 500 historical). Rent inflation: 3%/year. Maintenance: 1% of home value annually. Educational use only — not financial advice.

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Banker's Tip
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The part almost nobody publishes free

Prices and rates are widely reported. Whether a lender says yes is not. In the complete 2025 federal record, denial rates across the 100 largest FHA lenders ran from 1.8% to 78.7% — same programme, same year.

And it is not simply who applies where: standardizing on state, loan amount, income, debt-to-income and loan-to-value, applicant mix explains only a 2.7× range in expected outcomes.

Which lenders approve most → Your metro → Denied? →

CFPB HMDA 2025, computed by FinanceRateCalc. Covers the highest-volume lenders published per market, not all lenders. Historical observations, not predictions. CC BY 4.0, not independently reproduced.

The Denial Dispatch
One finding a week from the federal mortgage record.
One chart, three paragraphs, every Saturday. Measured, not assumed.
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AI Accuracy Index The Door Effect The Denial Map Open Data About 184 Metro Gaps Evidence Navigator Hallucination Files Press Newsletter
FinanceRateCalc · Independent analysis of the complete federal HMDA record · Measured, not assumed. · No lender or AI vendor funds or previews this work.