Housing Data 101: What’s the Breakeven Horizon in Real Estate?
The Breakeven Horizon is the housing data answer to ‘rent or buy?’ Here’s how we calculate it.
Where Renting Pays: Places Where Owning Takes a While to Pencil Out
It takes more than two years before buying the typical U.S. home makes more financial sense than renting it -- but that time frame varies by market. In San Jose, you'd have to spend 5.1 years in a house for buying to make more sense than renting.
Zillow’s Breakeven Horizon: The Financial Answer to ‘Rent or Buy’?
Here's a tool for helping weigh the financial side of an exciting and personal question.
Does the Obamas’ $8.1M Home Purchase in D.C. Make Financial Sense?
In some parts of the country, spending a few years in a home is long enough to make homeownership a financially strong bet. Washington, D.C. isn't one of them.
An expected slowdown in the pace of home value growth in a number of pricey, fast-moving markets means it may take longer going forward to break even financially when buying a home in those areas compared to renting it.
Rising rents, low interest rates and strong expected home value growth make buying a home instead of renting it an increasingly attractive financial option for those who can afford to do so.
Q4 2015 Breakeven Horizon: Buying a Home Pays Off for Most – But Not All – After Just Two Years
A longstanding combination of healthy home value growth and low mortgage interest rates, combined with robust growth in rents, is helping to keep the buy vs. rent equation tilted heavily towards buying in most areas for those planning on staying in their homes for longer than just a few years.
