Keep Above
Rent vs buy a home
Two ways to be housed, counted over the same years. Renting adds up the rent; owning adds up the deposit, the costs, the loan payments and the upkeep, then hands back the home's value minus what's still owed. Each lands on a net cost a year, side by side — and no winner is declared, because the figures are yours and the choice is too.
0 means no change assumed
Counted flat at 0 unless you set one
Enter the rent to count this way.
Paid at the start
Legal, inspection, moving — one-off
Rates, insurance, upkeep
0 means no change assumed
Enter the home's price to count this way.
Two ways to be housed, counted over the same years. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Over the years you'd stay | Renting | Owning |
|---|---|---|
| Paid out along the way | — | — |
| Held at the end | — | — |
| Of which loan interest | — | — |
| Net cost | — | — |
| Net cost a year | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
How does it count each way?
Both ways are counted over the same years. Renting adds up the rent, changing by the yearly figure you set. Owning adds up the deposit, the costs to buy, the loan payments and the yearly owning costs, then hands back the home's value minus whatever is left of the loan at the end. Each lands on a net cost a year, side by side.
Why do the change figures start at zero?
What a home's value or a rent would do over years is not knowable, so this page does not pick a number for either — both change figures start at 0, meaning no change assumed, and any change counted is one you typed. The loan rate is assumed fixed for the whole loan, which real loans often are not.
What are the meeting year and the matching rate?
The meeting year is the first year the two running totals would cross on your figures — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. The matching rate is the home-value change at which the two totals would come out about the same; it is shown because small changes in that one figure can move the whole comparison.
What about money not spent?
Whichever way pays out less along the way is holding money the other way spent. That money is counted flat — no growth — unless you set a flat rate on it, and no market figure is ever suggested for it. With the rate at 0 something real is left out, and the page says so.
What isn't counted?
No cost of selling at the end. No tax, and no rules of any country's housing schemes. Nothing about whether any lender would lend, or on what terms — the loan figures are generic arithmetic. And nothing about everything a home is beyond money, which this page cannot weigh. Nothing is read from anywhere, nothing is saved, and nothing here is financial advice.