Skip to main content

Rent or buy

Free tool · PDF & Excel reports planned with Premium/Elite

True amortization, real selling costs, and the year ownership actually overtakes renting — for your city and your timeline.
SAVES IN YOUR BROWSER · NOTHING LEAVES THIS DEVICE
1The place you’d buy
What you’d realistically pay, not the asking price.
Percent of the price you pay upfront. Use your quoted financing terms.
Your quoted annual rate.
Longer means lower payments and far more interest.
2The place you’d rent
A comparable place — same size, same area.
Enter your own nominal rent-growth assumption.
The single most important number here. Short stays favour renting, heavily.
Advanced — running costs
Now split by who actually pays. Illustrative inputs: check the local allocation of costs.
Open ▾
BUYER PAYS — as the owner
Costs a tenant never sees.
Owner property charges. Assign each charge according to the contract and local rules.
Insures the structure itself. The owner’s policy, not the tenant’s.
Roof, walls, building envelope — major work the owner carries (enter a property-specific estimate). Not the appliance repairs a tenant does.
The Hausgeld / service-charge portion the owner pays (reserve fund, structural). The part passed to tenants goes below.
Owner’s upside. Be conservative — use nominal growth, including inflation.
RENTER PAYS — as the tenant
In Austria a tenant carries more than rent: minor repairs and Betriebskosten.
Covers your belongings, not the building. Much cheaper than an owner’s policy.
Boiler servicing, minor repairs, fittings — in Austria typically the tenant’s. Set to 0 if your landlord covers them.
Heating, water, waste, and the building-fee share passed to tenants. If your rent is warm (includes these), set to 0 to avoid double-counting.

Transaction and occupancy costs

Use local quotes and contract terms. Purchase costs default to zero until entered. All growth assumptions are nominal. Both choices start with equal cash and the same monthly housing budget; unspent money is retained even when investment growth is off.

Invest the money you don’t tie up
Renting frees up cash a buyer sinks into a deposit — and in any month one option is cheaper, the difference can be invested too. This is one of the biggest hidden advantages of renting. Turn it off if you wouldn’t actually invest it.
The return you’d earn on invested cash, after tax — nominal, so it’s comparable to the home-growth and rent-rise figures above. This is the single most sensitive number here: be sober (returns are uncertain and losses are possible).
BUYING NET COST RENTING NET COST FIRST CROSSOVER
When buying overtakes rentingMATCHED CAPITAL LESS ENDING WEALTH
BUYING RENTING
Where every euro goes
WHAT THIS MEANS
✓ SAVED TO YOUR PLAN