Almost thirty years ago my parents were looking at buying a home, and that got me interested in the question, “How long before one reaches the break even point on the purchase of a residence compared to a lease?” The calculations are only for the numerical/financial side of that question, not questions like increased freedom with the property, the increase in stability (for one reason or another renting often involves moving at times, whether one wishes to or not), and so on.

I was rather young then, not yet out of high school and didn’t know anyone in the financial services sector, nor much about finances, so the spreadsheets will be missing some important elements, but the basic process it illustrates might be interesting to someone.

The spreadsheets were for an ancient program no longer in use, so the macros, sadly, are not available. One of the reasons I’m posting here, rather than on my technical site, is that it is not my intention to update these with modern macros, but more to show something I did a long time ago (pull from the archives).

I’ve put them in a Zip file, which for most people means you should be able to open it easily. You will of course want to run it through malware detection since most likely you don’t know me, or if the file is ‘compromised’ and it’s always prudent to do so with document files.

Download mortgage-rent-calc spreadsheets (in a Zip file)