The article is eye opening and it appears that buying in every large metro area in the U.S. right now is cheaper than renting. These figures are run with a 20% down payment on a home which certainly isn't realistic for all home buyers. But even with the minimum 3.5% down it works out to still be cheaper to buy in Denver than rent. To read the full article in detail, click here. Below is a breakdown of how they calculated this figure of 56%. Once again, just more reasons why now is such a great time to buy in Denver.
To calculate whether renting or buying costs less, we assume people can get a low mortgage rate of 3.5%, itemize their federal tax deductions and are in the 25% tax bracket, and will stay in their home for seven years. (Below, we'll show how changing these assumptions can affect the rent-versus-buy math.) We do the following calculations:
- First, we looked at all the homes for sale and rentals listed on Trulia in June, July and August 2012. On for-sale homes, we took the asking price and estimated what it would rent for; for rentals, we took the asking rent and estimated what it would sell for. That way, we can calculate the average rent and asking price for an identical set of properties in a metro area, for a direct apples-to-apples comparison. By looking at homes currently for sale or rent, we're able to illustrate the actual housing options that consumers face right now.
- Second, we estimated the total costs of renting and buying for the typical property in a metro over a seven-year period. We factored in all the costs of homeownership (e.g., closing costs, maintenance, insurance, taxes, etc.), along with the tax benefit of deducting mortgage interest and property taxes, as well as the proceeds from selling the home after seven years with modest home price appreciation. On the rental side, we factored in renters' insurance and the security deposit. Finally, we calculate the net-present-value of all those costs to capture the opportunity cost of tying your money up in a down payment. This gives us the total cost of buying versus renting. We then calculated the dollar difference and percentage difference between renting and buying.
- Finally, we looked at alternative scenarios of the costs of renting versus buying, by changing the mortgage rate, the income tax bracket for tax deductions, and the time horizon.
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