Rent vs Buy calculator


Patrick.net has put up a pretty cool rent vs buy calculator. You can adjust most of the numbers used to calculate the final result. He has some default numbers that I don't totally agree with. However he lives in the Bay area where prices are still very inflated compared to the IE.

I changed a few of the default numbers. I bumped up annual price change (he uses -1%), I used 1% (I figure 0% for a few years then 2% after that, so 1% is conservative I think). Property taxes, DP, income tax rate, interest rate etc will need to be adjusted for your own situation.

I ran the numbers for most of the homes I've looked at lately and all of them were better off for a buyer. The picture is a screen grab of one propery I looked at. The rental amount is based on a current similar home that is for rent (although that rental amount seems low for this particular area). Either way even using a rental amount that seems low, a buyer comes out nearly $400/mo better off.

http://patrick.net/housing/calculator.php#header