About RentBuyPlanner
RentBuyPlanner builds rigorous, transparent rent-vs-buy and real-estate finance tools. We exist to replace gut feel and oversimplified math with a model you can actually inspect, adjust, and trust.
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Why we built this
Most rent-vs-buy answers you find online are oversimplified. They pit a monthly mortgage payment against a monthly rent, and whichever number is smaller "wins." That comparison is misleading. It ignores property tax, maintenance, insurance, and the large one-off costs of buying and later selling a home. It also ignores the other side of the ledger entirely: what a renter could earn by investing the cash they did not tie up in a down payment and closing costs.
We built RentBuyPlanner to model the question properly. Our flagship tool uses an invest-the-difference net-worth approach: both scenarios deploy the same total cash at every point in time, and we compare each path's net worth over the years rather than just this month's bill. The result is a clear break-even horizon — the point at which buying pulls ahead of renting — so you can make a decision based on your real time frame instead of a headline number. You can try it now with the rent vs buy calculator.
Our approach
We believe a finance tool should show its work. Every formula, every default, and every simplifying choice behind our model is written down in plain language. If you want to see exactly how the numbers are produced, read our full methodology — including a worked example you can reproduce by hand.
Just as important: every assumption is editable. Mortgage rate, home appreciation, investment return, rent growth, property tax, maintenance, closing and selling costs — none of these are hidden behind the scenes, and none are presented as predictions. They are starting points you can change to match your market and your situation. The illustrative figures we use in our guides are always framed as examples, never as live quotes or forecasts.
We are not selling a mortgage, a brokerage account, or any other financial product. That independence shapes the whole site. Our job is to help you reason about a decision clearly, not to steer you toward a transaction that pays us. If you want to go deeper on any topic, our connected tools cover the pieces — the mortgage calculator, the down payment calculator, and the closing cost estimator all feed the same transparent model.
Who writes this
Our calculators and guides are produced by the RentBuyPlanner editorial team, a small independent group responsible for the models, the assumptions, and the explanations you read here. We are not a lender or brokerage and do not sell a mortgage product — our only job is to model the decision honestly.
We hold our content to a clear standard for accuracy, sourcing, and independence. You can read how we research, review, and correct what we publish in our editorial policy.
How we stay free
RentBuyPlanner is free to use. We cover our costs by running advertising on the site, served through Google. Ads never change the output of a calculation, and we keep them clearly separated from our content. We use privacy-conscious analytics with a consent layer for visitors in the EEA and the UK; you can read the details, including what data is collected and how consent works, in our privacy policy.
We are also working toward optional referral partnerships in the future — for example, with lenders or service providers. If and when we add them, we will label them clearly and disclose the relationship, and they will never influence our analysis or the math behind our tools.
Get in touch
Questions, corrections, and feedback genuinely help us improve. If you spot something that looks wrong, or you want to suggest an assumption we should expose, please reach out through our contact page or email hello@rentbuyplanner.com. We read everything.