Should you rent or buy?

It's the year buying's total position (home equity plus any side savings) catches up to renting's (an invested portfolio of everything you didn't spend on housing). Buying front-loads its costs (down payment, closing costs) and pays them back slowly through equity and appreciation. There's no single typical breakeven year for North Texas or anywhere else: it depends overwhelmingly on the spread between the return you assume on invested savings and home appreciation, and on whether the renter in the scenario actually invests the difference every month. Change either one and the breakeven year moves by years, sometimes past the horizon entirely. That's why we don't quote a number here and let the calculator answer it for your inputs.

Because you'll pay them. Maintenance runs roughly 1% of the home's value per year, selling costs 6–8% once you count agent commission and seller-paid closing costs, and PMI applies at less than 20% down until your loan balance works its way below 80% of the original price. A calculator that leaves those out will always tell you to buy, which makes it a sales tool, not a calculator.

In months owning costs more than renting, this model assumes the renter puts that extra cash into the market instead, including the down payment and closing costs they never spent, invested from day one. How that portfolio grows depends entirely on the return you assume. At 0% it just sits there, which is the scenario most favorable to buying. At a real long-run market return, renting-and-investing can out-earn owning for a long time, sometimes indefinitely, in the same scenario. That single number, the field labeled 'if you rented, what would you earn investing the difference?', moves the verdict more than any other input, which is exactly why it's the first field in the calculator rather than buried in assumptions.

That's a fair and common critique, and it's the strongest real argument for owning: a mortgage payment is forced savings, and a brokerage account you're supposed to fund every month on willpower alone often doesn't get funded. If that sounds like you, set the investment-return field to 0%. That's this calculator's way of saying 'I'd spend the savings, not invest them,' and it will tilt the answer toward buying accordingly. The honest answer to 'rent or buy' depends on which of those two people you actually are.

Usually, yes, at least financially. Under about five years, the transaction costs on both ends rarely get paid back regardless of the investment-return assumption. That said, this only prices the money. It can't price the school district, the stability, or being able to paint a wall. Those are real, and they're yours to weigh.