Hundred SummersRent or buy: who is better off after five, ten or twenty years?
The owner’s equity after the mortgage, stamp duty, maintenance and selling costs, against the renter’s invested deposit plus every month’s difference between renting and owning: wealth compared at the end of the stay you choose. Your figures never leave your browser.
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Worked example
Computed when this page was built by the same engine that runs the calculator above, so the figures below and the live tool can never disagree. Change any input above to see your own.
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Home / deposit | £300,000 / £45,000 |
| Mortgage | 4.5% over 25 years |
| Rent | £1,300 a month, growing 2.5% |
| House-price growth / investment return | 2.5% / 5.0% |
| Stay | 10 years, first-time buyer in England |
| Results | |
|---|---|
| Owner's equity after selling costs | £191,009 |
| Renter's investments | £117,444 |
| Buying leaves you better off by | £73,565 |
| Interest paid / rent paid over the stay | £100,375 / £174,773 |
The next question
How much could I borrow? →Mortgage affordability calculator
Or answer it with everything else: the full Hundred Summers plan connects your pay, pensions, savings, property, tax and spending year by year, and stress-tests them across 500 simulated market histories.
Read the guides
- Stamp duty when you move: three taxes and the buy-before-you-sell surcharge →SDLT, LBTT and LTT side by side at 2026/27 rates, worked figures for a £300,000 home in each nation, why the additional-property surcharge catches ordinary movers, and the refund window if the old home sells later.
- Your mortgage: how the payment is built, what the term costs, and what a rate change does →Why half of every early payment is interest, what stretching the term to 35 years really costs, the interest-only trap, and how a two-point rate rise moves the monthly figure, with the arithmetic behind each.
The comparison done properly
Comparing rent with a mortgage payment answers the wrong question, because part of the mortgage payment is saving and none of the rent is. The fair test is wealth at the end. The buyer puts in the deposit and purchase costs, pays the mortgage and upkeep, and ends with a home less the loan still owed and the cost of selling. The renter keeps the deposit and costs invested, pays rent, and invests every month the owner’s outgoings exceed the rent, or draws on the investment when rent is the dearer option. Both paths use your own assumptions about house prices, rents, the mortgage rate and investment returns, and the answer is sensitive to every one, which is the honest lesson: the decision is a bet on those numbers, and the calculator lets you see which bets matter.
What the arithmetic leaves out
Security of tenure and the freedom to move, the risk of negative equity in a short stay, the chance of a rate rise at remortgage, and tax on investments held outside an ISA. The affordability calculator checks whether the purchase is possible at all, the deposit calculator how long the deposit takes, and the stamp duty calculator the purchase tax in each nation.
Sources
- Stamp duty: HMRC SDLT residential rates, Revenue Scotland LBTT, Welsh Government LTT.
- ISA allowance: HMRC Individual Savings Accounts.