I Ran the Rent-vs-Buy Numbers in 12 Cities. Buying Won in Only 4.

**My methodology (so you can check my work)** I used the following assumptions across all twelve cities: a 30-year fixed mortgage at 6.9% interest (roughly the national average as of early 2026), 20% down payment, 1% of home value per year in maintenance, property taxes at the effective rate for each city, homeowners insurance, and 6% realtor commission when selling. For the rent scenario, I assumed rent increases of 3% annually and that the renter invests the down payment plus any monthly savings into a broad market index fund returning 7% annually after inflation. I pulled median home prices and rents from Zillow's most recent data. Our [mortgage calculator](/en/calculator/mortgage-calculator) handled the loan amortization, and I cross-checked the total cost of ownership against the [home affordability calculator](/en/calculator/home-affordability-calculator) to make sure I wasn't cherry-picking scenarios. Now, the cities. **Where buying actually won** Detroit, Michigan. Median home price: $82,000. Median rent: $1,200/month. This is the clearest case in the country. Your mortgage on an $82K home with 20% down is roughly $430/month. Add property tax (Detroit's is high at about 2.2%, so $150/month), insurance ($80), and a maintenance reserve ($68/month at 1% of value). Total: about $728/month versus $1,200 in rent. Over five years, the buyer spends $43,700 total and builds roughly $9,800 in equity (the loan balance drops from $65,600 to $59,300 assuming minimum payments, plus modest appreciation). The renter spends $72,000 and builds zero equity. Even if the home doesn't appreciate at all, buying wins by about $20,000 over five years. Over ten years, the gap widens to roughly $55,000. Detroit is a buy by any reasonable measure. Cleveland, Ohio. Median home price: $125,000. Median rent: $1,150/month. Mortgage: $660/month. Property tax is around 1.6% ($167/month). Insurance ($90), maintenance ($104). Total ownership: about $1,021/month versus $1,150 in rent. Over five years, buying saves you about $7,700 on monthly costs alone, and you build roughly $13,000 in equity. Over ten, you're ahead by about $38,000. Cleveland is affordable enough that the monthly carry cost of owning is genuinely cheaper than renting. That's rare. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Median home price: $230,000. Median rent: $1,350/month. This one is closer. The monthly ownership cost comes to about $1,590 (mortgage $1,210, property tax $230, insurance $100, maintenance $192). So owning costs $240/month more than renting. But over ten years, you build significant equity and the home likely appreciates to around $309,000 at 3% annually. After selling costs, you net roughly $95,000 in equity plus appreciation. The renter who invested the $240/month difference plus the $46,000 down payment ends up with about $91,000. Buying edges out renting by roughly $4,000 over ten years. Barely. But it counts. Indianapolis, Indiana. Median home price: $260,000. Median rent: $1,250/month. Monthly ownership cost: about $1,760. That's $510/month more than renting. Over five years, renting looks better. But stretch it to ten, and the equity picture shifts. You build about $42,000 in loan paydown, the home appreciates to roughly $349,000, and after selling costs you walk away with about $108,000. The renter investing the difference gets about $100,000. Buying wins by $8,000 over a decade. Not exactly a landslide, but if you're planning to stay put, it's the smarter play. **Where renting crushed buying** San Francisco, California. Median home price: $1,400,000. Median rent: $3,200/month. Let that sink in for a second. Your down payment alone is $280,000. Your monthly ownership cost is roughly $9,050 (mortgage $7,380, property tax $875 at 0.75%, insurance $180, maintenance $1,167). Even with Bay Area appreciation, which has averaged 4-5% annually, over five years you're spending $543,000 in ownership costs. The renter spends $206,000 in rent and has that $280,000 down payment plus the $5,850 monthly difference compounding in the market. After five years, the renter's investment portfolio is worth roughly $635,000. The homeowner has maybe $320,000 in equity after selling costs. Renting wins by over $300,000. Over ten years, the gap narrows but remains roughly $180,000 in favor of renting. San Francisco is a renter's city and probably will be for the foreseeable future. New York City, New York. Median home price: $780,000 (and that's being generous for something habitable). Median rent: $3,000/month. Monthly ownership: about $5,700 (mortgage $4,110, property tax $520, insurance $150, maintenance $650, and if it's a co-op, tack on another $800 in maintenance fees). Over five years, renting and investing the difference beats buying by roughly $95,000. Over ten years, by about $60,000. New York is close enough that buying can make sense if you're confident you'll stay 15+ years and you find something reasonably priced (good luck with that). But on a pure math basis, renting wins. Austin, Texas. Median home price: $560,000. Median rent: $1,800/month. People keep moving to Austin and buying, and I understand the impulse. It's a great city. But Texas property taxes are punishing. On a $560K home, you're paying about $12,320 per year in property tax alone (2.2% rate). That's over $1,000/month before your mortgage even starts. Total monthly ownership: about $4,400. The renter pays $1,800. That $2,600 monthly gap, invested over five years, grows to roughly $225,000 when you include the $112,000 down payment. The homeowner has maybe $150,000 in net equity. Renting wins by $75,000 over five years and still wins by about $40,000 over ten. Texas has no income tax, but they get you on property tax. Factor it in. Miami, Florida. Median home price: $580,000. Median rent: $2,600/month. Miami used to be affordable. Those days are gone. Property insurance in South Florida has exploded since 2022. A $580K home can carry insurance premiums of $400-600/month depending on flood zone. Monthly ownership runs about $4,700. Over five years, renting wins by roughly $110,000. Over ten, by about $65,000. And that's before you factor in the genuine risk of hurricane damage that insurance may not fully cover. I love Miami. I wouldn't buy there right now. Los Angeles, California. Median home price: $950,000. Median rent: $2,800/month. Monthly ownership: about $6,200. The renter saves $3,400/month and has a $190,000 down payment to invest. Over five years, the renter's portfolio grows to roughly $490,000. The homeowner's net equity after selling is about $280,000. Renting wins by $210,000. LA is not even close. Seattle, Washington. Median home price: $850,000. Median rent: $2,400/month. Monthly ownership: about $5,500. Renting wins by approximately $150,000 over five years and $90,000 over ten. Seattle's price-to-rent ratio is one of the worst in the country for buyers. Denver, Colorado. Median home price: $625,000. Median rent: $1,900/month. I'm still not sure Denver is a buy, honestly. Monthly ownership runs about $4,100 versus $1,900 in rent. Over five years, renting wins by about $85,000. Over ten, buying catches up and edges ahead by roughly $12,000. So it depends entirely on your time horizon. If you're going to stay 12+ years, buy. If there's any chance you'll move within a decade, rent. I wish someone had told me that at 27. Portland, Oregon. Median home price: $550,000. Median rent: $1,650/month. Oregon's income tax (9.9% top rate) plus property tax plus the monthly ownership cost of about $3,800 means renting wins by about $100,000 over five years and $50,000 over ten. The price-to-rent ratio in Portland simply doesn't justify buying unless you're emotionally committed to a specific neighborhood for the long haul.

**First, figure out your time horizon.** This is the single most important variable. If you might move within five years, renting is almost always better regardless of the city. Transaction costs alone (6% to sell, 2-5% to buy) eat up any equity gains in the first few years. If you're confident you'll stay at least ten years, buying starts to look attractive in more places. At fifteen years, buying wins in most markets. I tell my clients: if you can't honestly say you'll be there in seven years, don't buy. **Second, calculate the price-to-rent ratio.** Take the median home price and divide it by annual rent for a comparable property. If the ratio is above 20, renting is generally better. Below 15, buying usually wins. Between 15 and 20, it depends on your specific situation. Detroit's ratio is about 5.7. San Francisco's is about 36. That one number tells you most of what you need to know. Run your own numbers through the [rent vs buy calculator](/en/calculator/rent-vs-buy-calculator) and see where your city falls. **Third, be honest about maintenance.** The 1% rule (budget 1% of home value per year for maintenance) is a minimum. Older homes need more. Homes in harsh climates need more. My rental in Pittsburgh needed $8,000 in plumbing work in year two. That was not in my spreadsheet when I bought it. The [home affordability calculator](/en/calculator/home-affordability-calculator) can help you see what your real monthly burden looks like when you include maintenance reserves. **Fourth, invest the difference.** This is the step most people skip. If you rent and spend less per month than you would owning, that difference needs to go into investments. Not a savings account. Not a new car payment. An actual low-cost index fund. If you rent for $2,000 and ownership would cost $4,000, that $2,000 monthly gap at 7% annual returns becomes $345,000 after ten years. If you just spend it, renting was indeed throwing money away. But that's on you, not on renting. **Fifth, consider your career flexibility.** I have clients who bought homes and then got job offers in other cities that would have increased their income by 30-40%. They turned them down because selling would have cost too much. That's an invisible cost of homeownership nobody talks about. Renting gives you optionality. Optionality has real economic value, even if it doesn't show up in a spreadsheet.

The biggest mistake is comparing monthly rent to monthly mortgage payment. I see this constantly, even from other agents. Someone says "my rent is $2,000 and my mortgage would be $1,800, so buying is cheaper." No. Your mortgage is $1,800 but your total cost of ownership includes property tax, insurance, HOA fees, maintenance, and the opportunity cost of your down payment. In most cities, the real monthly cost of owning is 40-60% higher than the mortgage alone. I ran our [mortgage calculator](/en/calculator/mortgage-calculator) for a client last month who was convinced a $400K home would cost her "about $2,000 a month." It was $2,800 after everything. She was grateful. Her bank account was grateful. The second mistake is ignoring opportunity cost. When you put $80,000 down on a house, that money is locked up. You can't invest it. You can't use it for a business. You can't access it without selling or refinancing. If that $80,000 earned 7% in the stock market instead, it would become $157,000 in ten years. If your home appreciates from $400K to $537K in the same period (also 3% annually), your equity gain on the down payment portion is actually less than what the market would have delivered. The down payment is not a cost-free decision. It has a price. The third mistake is underestimating transaction costs. Selling a home costs about 6-8% of the sale price when you include realtor commissions, closing costs, repairs requested by the buyer, and staging. On a $500,000 home, that's $30,000 to $40,000 gone the day you sell. If you bought the home two years earlier and it appreciated 6%, you gained $30,000. You made nothing. You might have lost money after maintenance. This is why short-term homeownership is almost always a losing financial proposition. The fourth mistake is thinking rent is "wasted." Rent pays for shelter, which is a basic human need. You wouldn't say grocery spending is wasted because you didn't buy a farm. You wouldn't say a gym membership is wasted because you don't own the building. Rent gives you a place to live with zero maintenance responsibility, zero transaction costs when you leave, and the flexibility to relocate for better opportunities. That has genuine economic value. The fifth mistake, and I say this as someone who made it personally, is making this decision based on identity. Buying a home feels like becoming a real adult. It feels like stability and success and doing what you're supposed to do. But feelings don't pay your mortgage. Run the numbers. If the numbers say rent, then rent with confidence. You're not throwing money away. You're making a calculated financial decision, which is the most adult thing you can possibly do.