break-even ladder

Find Your Rent-or-Buy Break-Even Year — Free

Paste your rent, the purchase costs and the holding costs, and read the year owning overtakes renting on your own figures.

The proof surface

The five-year rule comes from a different market and ignores transaction costs. Recomputing on the reader's own rent, price and maintenance is what makes the comparison mean something locally.

Inputthe rent you pay, the price you are considering and every holding cost

Rare devicecomputes the crossing year from the reader's own rent, price, deposit and holding costs instead of a market rule of thumb

Output artifacta year-by-year ladder with the crossing year weighted and the assumptions listed

Cost$0 · local-first · one free run · samples labelled

Sample, not your facts: Sample: rent $1,650 a month, price $312,000, 5.1% over 25 years, transaction costs $9,400, maintenance $2,600 a year — four concrete points across four types.

Why the flat version breaks

The five-year rule

In markets with high transaction costs and 5% borrowing, the crossing often lands at year seven or later on identical numbers.

Ignoring maintenance

Maintenance and service charges rise with ownership and are the cost renters never see in a comparison.

Assuming price growth

A crossing computed on assumed appreciation is a forecast, not a comparison; the honest version holds the price flat and shows the years.

How to work the break-even ladder

List the figures

Rent, price, deposit, borrowing rate, transaction and holding costs, one line each.

Enter price and rent

Both figures the ladder holds against each other year by year.

Read the rungs

Each year is a rung with the cumulative position on both options; the crossing rung is weighted.

Test two scenarios

Re-run with a shorter horizon and doubled maintenance before making a decision.

What the ladder replaces

Question	Before	On the ladder
When does buying win	apply the five-year rule	crossing year from your own figures
What transaction costs do	treat them as small	they set the first rungs of the ladder
What to test next	nothing	a shorter horizon and doubled maintenance

The ladder is arithmetic on your inputs; it does not model house prices, interest-rate changes, tax or investment returns, and it is not financial advice.

Run it on the samples, right here

FIRST-LOAD

Data note: Everything runs in this browser tab on the break-even ladder: your rent, price and cost figures stays on this device, nothing is uploaded, and the reading is rebuilt only when you press run.

Go deeper: the companion app files the same reading as a climbing rung ladder

The article demo above runs without limits. The companion app keeps a local history, exports the rows as CSV, prints the ready-to-mail packet, and holds your drafts on this device — one free run, then $ 9 one-time for the layer that keeps filing.

The ladder and the crossing year are free. The paid layer keeps three scenarios and prints the comparison for a mortgage appointment.

Open the break-even ladder companion

Boundary

This break-even ladder works only on the rent, price and holding cost figures you paste you paste. It does not give financial advice, does not arrange a mortgage, and does not predict house prices. The figures describe what you supplied, not what is true in the world. Confirm anything you plan to act on with an independent mortgage adviser or financial adviser who does not earn commission from the recommendation before you rely on it.

What this is built on

Every figure comes from the rent, price and holding cost figures you paste you paste; nothing is looked up, scraped or asserted as verified.
Method: each year compares cumulative rent with cumulative ownership cost, including transaction costs amortised over the years held
Sample values are labelled samples — illustrative by design, not your data and not a quotation of any organisation's policy.

Before: the reader accepted the five-year rule. After: they can see the crossing at year seven on their own rent and price.