What does this tool do?
"Should I buy a flat or keep renting?" is one of the biggest money questions in India. This tool compares two paths over a horizon you choose (say 15 years):
- Buy: pay down payment + stamp duty, take a home loan, pay EMI + maintenance + property tax. Your wealth = value of the house (which appreciates) minus the loan still pending.
- Rent: keep paying rent (which rises every year), but invest the down payment and every rupee you save vs the buyer each month. Your wealth = your investment corpus.
It then shows a year-by-year table and tells you which path leaves you wealthier, and the breakeven year when buying starts winning (if it does).
Who is it for?
Young professionals deciding on their first home, families comparing cities, NRIs weighing an India purchase, or anyone curious whether their landlord or their bank is the better deal.
How to use it (step by step)
- Open the 🧮 Calculator tab.
- Enter the property price and down payment % you can manage.
- Enter your loan rate and tenure. Stamp duty defaults to 6% — change it for your state (roughly 5-8%).
- Enter your current monthly rent for a similar house and the yearly rent increase (5% is typical).
- Enter the return % you expect if you invested instead (e.g. 11-12% equity, 7% FD) and the appreciation % you expect on the property (historically 5-8% in most Indian cities).
- Read the verdict and scan the year-by-year table.
Example use cases
- Sneha in Pune: ₹80L flat vs ₹25,000 rent — sees renting + investing wins for the first several years, and whether buying ever overtakes.
- Arjun, NRI: checks if a ₹1.5Cr Gurgaon flat appreciating at 6% beats investing his down payment at 11%.
- Parents' advice check: "rent is money down the drain" — test it with real numbers.
Good to know
- Non-money factors (stability, pride of ownership, flexibility to relocate) are real — this tool covers only the finances.
- Tax effects (24(b)/80C benefits for buyers, capital gains tax on investments and on the house) are not modelled — they partly offset each other.
- If rent is higher than the buyer's monthly outgo in later years, the model fairly lets the buyer invest that surplus too.