Rooofread tools · What If I Keep Renting?
Buying doesn’t have to be the next chapter.
Explore two possible paths, with the assumptions that make each one work.
Your next step, on your own terms
Rent Is Not the Rent
Compare actual rentals, including the bills, transport costs and incentives the headline rent leaves out.
Take it with you →Free Excel workbook. Includes a Start here guide. Enter your own numbers in the downloaded file.
What the rent-or-buy comparison calculates
Renting and buying can lead to different balances of cash, investments and home equity. What If I Keep Renting? models both paths from the same starting assets, so you can see how your choices and assumptions affect the years ahead.
What it includes
Rent, mortgage principal and interest, ownership costs, closing costs, investments, ongoing household spending and separate investment contributions for each path. Editable assumptions cover rent increases, investment returns after tax and fees, home appreciation, a renewal mortgage rate and optional landlord or homeowner shocks. Enter selling fees to see an additional sale-adjusted result.
How to read your result
Compare liquid cash and investments as well as net worth. Home equity is not cash available to pay next month’s bills. A higher modelled net worth depends on the growth, costs and contributions you entered. If cash falls below zero, the path has an unfunded shortfall: the tool does not assume a loan or automatically sell investments to cover it.
How the calculation works
Both paths begin with identical cash and investments. Buying deducts the down payment and closing costs, then tracks the mortgage balance month by month. Renting retains those starting funds. Planned investment contributions earn the entered return; remaining cash flow accumulates in cash at zero return. Home value follows your appreciation assumption. Results are nominal, and existing non-mortgage debt is held constant rather than paid down on an inferred schedule.
Read the full methodology, coverage and dated sources →
Illustrative scenario · Canadian dollars
Worked example: renting or buying for the next five years?
Sam wants to compare two paths from the same $150,000 cash balance, no investments and no non-mortgage debt. Take-home pay is $7,000 a month, with $1,800 of essential spending and $500 of flexible spending.
Buying inputs: $500,000 purchase price; $100,000 down (20%); $400,000 mortgage at an assumed 4.5%, paid monthly over 25 years with semi-annual compounding; five-year term. Monthly ownership costs beyond the mortgage: property tax $250, condo fees $400, insurance $100, utilities $150 and maintenance $200. Entered purchase costs total $10,000: $7,000 manual purchase tax, $2,000 legal, $500 inspection and $500 moving. This is an illustrative cost allowance, not a jurisdiction-specific tax quote. Other purchase costs are set to zero.
Renting and saving inputs: rent is $2,200 plus $150 utilities per month. Each path contributes $500 a month to investments, with no additional savings goal. For a deliberately flat baseline, investment return, rent growth, home-price growth and ownership-cost growth are all 0%. There are no landlord or homeowner shocks and no selling fee in the main comparison.
- Renting after five years
- $291,000 net worth: $261,000 cash + $30,000 investments
- Buying after five years
- $271,981 net worth: $93,166 cash + $30,000 investments + $148,814 home equity
- Modelled difference
- Renting is ahead by $19,019 before selling costs
Renting retains the upfront purchase cash and costs less each month in this example. Buying pays down about $48,814 of mortgage principal, but the home does not appreciate under the entered assumption. The result illustrates why home equity and cash should be read separately. Independently rounded components may differ from the rounded total by $1.
Limits: 0% growth is a baseline, not a forecast. Cash earns no return; investment returns are entered after tax and fees. A sale would incur costs, and a different rent, purchase price, return or appreciation assumption can change which path comes out ahead. This comparison does not measure security, flexibility or the value of owning.
Sources and date: Rooofread hypothetical scenario, calculated September 26, 2026. Background: FCAC, Buying a home and FCAC, Mortgage terms and amortization, consulted September 26, 2026. See our calculation methodology and rule sources. These sources explain the concepts; the sample prices, rates and expenses in this example are assumptions, not market quotes.
Questions this tool can help answer
- What if I rent and invest for another five years?
- How sensitive is the outcome to home-price growth or investment returns?
- Could either path leave me short of cash even while net worth grows?