Rent vs Buy
The shared budget equals the buyer's max monthly payment. Whatever is left after housing costs is invested. Net worth after 30 years decides.
All figures are in today's money: every rate on this page is real, i.e. above inflation. Why?
General
Rent
Above inflation. 0 means rent keeps pace with prices.
Buy
Above inflation
Your bank's rate minus inflation, e.g. 3.5% at 2% inflation is 1.5%
The rate holds for the fixed term, then resets randomly every term after. The resets feed the simulated P10/P50/P90 bands and the buy side of the paired "what each choice actually pays" chart below, never the deterministic result above, which always holds today's loan rate flat for the whole horizon. Rate volatility 0 turns resets off.
Lifestyle factors
Put a price on the things money alone misses. They are added as a labelled adjustment, and the pure financial result stays visible too.
Move anytime, no upkeep, no market risk.
Repairs, paperwork, dealing with tradespeople.
| Metric | P10 | P50 | P90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer Net Worth Buyer net worth: property − loan + savings | €298,196 | €446,861 | €548,298 |
| Renter Net Worth Renter net worth: invested savings | €73,117 | €271,875 | €855,873 |
| Break-Even Buying overtakes renting | – | Year 6 | – |
| Advantage | – | €174,986 | – |
What each choice actually pays
Where your net worth after 30 years lands under each decision: buying in the upper panel, renting and investing in the lower one. Both panels use exactly the same buckets, x axis and y axis, so a bar compares directly with the bar below it. Read the shapes, not the overlap: both paths ride the same market in any one scenario, so the distance between these two peaks is not the odds of one beating the other. The Advantage row above settles that.
- Upper panel (Buying): The share of scenarios in which buying finishes in each range.
- Lower panel (Renting & investing): The share of the same scenarios in which renting & investing finishes in each range. Both panels use exactly the same buckets, x axis and y axis, so a bar here compares directly with the bar above it.
- point at the chart: Hovering or tapping anywhere on the chart names the bucket under the pointer and, for each side, the share of scenarios that finish inside it, below it and above it (the three add to 100%). Dragging across the chart with the mouse zooms to what you selected.
- clipped tail: The ‹ and › percentages at the ends of the axis are the scenarios finishing outside the drawn range, each after a ■ in its side's colour. Up to 1.0% of one side's scenarios sit outside it; they are counted in every number on this page, just not drawn here.
Net worth over time
Budget = €1,358/mo (buyer's max payment). Pure cash. Soft factors are priced separately in the card below.
Hover or tap a year to see that year's January monthly cash flow: how each side's net worth moved that month. Figures are that single month, not a yearly average.
Soft factors
Your lifestyle prices, added as a plain labelled adjustment, not compounded like investments. The net-worth verdict above stays pure cash; here is what changes once your soft-factor pricing is included.
Cash verdict: buying wins by €174,986.
Pricing in your soft factors, the gap moves to buying by €84,986.
- Buyer starts down by purchase costs, renter invests equity plus every leftover euro of the shared budget. Both sides invest whatever is left over.
- Soft factors (flexibility, effort) are flat monthly prices, never compounded; the toggle folds them into the cash figures above.
- Scenarios: both invested pots share one lognormal monthly market return with volatility σ = 15% (set in the header); house price and rent follow your fixed inputs; win-% is P(buy finishes ahead), fans are P10–P90, lines are the median (P50).
- Rate reset risk is separate from market volatility above: the loan rate is fixed for 10 years, then re-rolls and re-amortises each reset using its own rate-volatility input. Set it to 0 to turn resets off.
Loan balance
L_0 = max(0, 400,000 · (1 + c) − 60,000)
- P: purchase price
- c: incidental costs, as a fraction = incidentalPct/100
- E: equity / starting capital
Monthly annuity (shared budget)
A = L_0 · (r_l + r_repay) / 12, budget = A + 250
- L_0: loan balance (see above)
- r_l: loan rate, as a fraction = loanRate/100
- r_repay: repayment rate, as a fraction = repaymentRate/100
- m: monthly maintenance
Buyer net worth
- V(t): property value after t months, compounding at the monthly appreciation rate
- L(t): remaining loan balance after t months
- S_buy(t): invested leftover after the annuity + maintenance, compounding at the monthly market rate
Renter net worth
NW_rent(t) = S_rent(t), S_rent(0) = 60,000
- S_rent(t): invested pot after t months; starts at equity E, each month adds (budget − rent) and compounds at the monthly market rate
- E: equity / starting capital
Soft-adjusted net worth
NW_buy,soft = NW_buy − 100·months, NW_rent,soft = NW_rent + 150·months
- effortCost: buyer hassle cost, currency/mo, never compounded
- flexibilityValue: renter flexibility value, currency/mo, never compounded
- months: comparison horizon in months = years × 12
Rate-reset step
r_l,new = max(0, r_l,prev + Δ), Δ ∈ {−σ_r√3, 0, +σ_r√3}, every 10
- r_l,prev: loan rate carried into the reset
- σ_r: rateVolatilityPp, in percentage points
- fixedTermYears: years between resets
Re-amortised annuity after reset
- L_reset: loan balance remaining at the reset date
- n: months left in the loan's own payoff term (unaffected by the comparison horizon)
Terminal gap
gap(T) = NW_buy(T) − NW_rent(T), T = 30 · 12
- T: comparison horizon in months
- years: comparison horizon in years
Assumptions behind every figure: how this site models the market →
Every model leaves things out. Here is what this one does not see:
- Transaction costs on the way out (agent, notary, capital-gains rules where they apply) are not modelled, so a short holding period looks better than it is.
- Property tax, building insurance and one-off big-ticket repairs (roof, boiler, structural work) are not in the monthly maintenance figure, only routine upkeep is. Buying looks cheaper than it is.
- Rent is grown at one steady rate every year; a real landlord can spike rent sharply at lease renewal, or the market can undershoot it. Renting's own growth risk gets no modelled fan the way the invested pots do, so renting looks more predictable than it is. Rate-reset risk is priced into the win-%/gap histogram and the buy side of the paired chart below, but the rate walk is drawn independently of the market, and every reset re-amortises onto the loan's original payoff date out of the same fixed monthly budget. A real borrower can stretch the term instead, and resets that tend to land during a downturn are riskier than this page shows.
- Flexibility and effort are priced as a flat monthly figure that never compounds like the cash lines above it, so their true value in an actual relocation year is understated.