Rent vs Buy Calculator

What can move this result

• It only knows the figures you type in. Offsets, deductions, prior-year losses, other income, your partner's position and anything you have not entered are not in the result, and any of them can move it a long way.
• Rates and thresholds change, sometimes mid-year and occasionally with retrospective effect. Each calculator shows the financial year and the verification date it is working from — outside that year the result is wrong rather than approximate.
• Assumptions are set to a reasonable default and every non-statutory one can be changed. Defaults are not predictions, and a small change to a growth or inflation assumption compounds into a large change in a long projection.
• Where a result reaches two or more years into the future it is shown in today's dollars as well as future dollars, because a future-dollar figure overstates what the money will actually buy.
• It is a generic calculator. It is not built around any particular product, it does not compare the market, and it cannot tell you whether a product is suitable for you.

Why these default assumptions are reasonable

• Mortgage rate — 6.3% a year. The RBA's published average variable rate on outstanding owner-occupier loans (table F6, June 2026). An average across the whole market rather than a sharp new-customer offer, because the comparison runs for decades and loans drift back to the average. Source · You can change this input.
• Rent growth — 3% a year. Sits between the RBA's 2.5% inflation-target midpoint and the post-2022 run of the ABS CPI rents series, which spiked well above it before moderating. Rent growth is the renter's side of this comparison, so a figure above pure inflation avoids flattering renting. It is a scenario setting — rerun the comparison with your own lease history. Source · You can change this input.
• Property price growth — 4% a year. RBA research (Fox and Tulip, RDP 2014-06) put long-run real dwelling appreciation near 2.5% a year; adding the RBA's 2.5% inflation midpoint gives about 5% nominal, and the default sits a point below that. Deliberately below the raw multi-decade historical average, because that era's structural decline in interest rates cannot repeat — and because overstating property growth biases this whole comparison toward buying, which is the error that matters here. A one-point change flips the long-run answer, so test your own scenarios. Source · You can change this input.
• Return on invested savings — 6.1% a year. What the renter's deposit-equivalent earns if invested instead: ASIC Moneysmart's published net return for a balanced portfolio, the same figure used across this site. Raising it favours renting and lowering it favours buying, symmetrically with the property growth assumption above — which is why both carry sources rather than being tuned. Source · You can change this input.