Rent vs Buy vs Invest Calculator India: Every Box and Result

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You are looking at a flat, you can see the EMI on a loan offer, and a small voice says you could rent a similar place and invest the rest. This guide shows you how to put both ideas into the Rent vs Buy vs Invest calculator, what each box means, and how to read the answer. It describes what the page computes. It does not tell you what to do.

What does the Rent vs Buy vs Invest calculator actually compare?

It compares two paths that start from the same cash and end on the same day.

• Buy path. You pay the down payment and the purchase costs on day 0. Each month you pay the loan payment, the maintenance and the property tax. At the end of the years you typed, the property is sold, the sale cost and the tax on the gain come out, and the loan balance is paid off from what is left.
• Rent-and-invest path. You keep the cash you did not spend on the property and invest it. Each month you pay the rent, which steps up once a year. Each month the cheaper path invests the difference between the two monthly costs, so when the rent is below what the Buy path pays, the renter invests the gap.

Each path is then valued at the end, and the page shows which is ahead on your numbers. Your numbers stay in your browser.

What do I type in step 1, the property?

Four boxes are needed, three more are optional.

Box	What to type
Price of the property	The full price in rupees.
Down payment you pay	What you pay yourself, in rupees. If it equals the price, there is no loan.
Years to look at	1 to 30. The property is sold at the end of these years and both paths are counted that day.
Change in the property's value a year	The size of the change in percent, then pick Rises or Falls. Typing a minus sign picks Falls.
Stamp duty, as a share of the price	Optional. Your own rate.
Registration, as a share of the price	Optional. Your own rate.
Other purchase costs	Optional, in rupees. Interiors and furnishing belong here, because the tool has no separate box for them.

The tool carries no stamp duty table. Whatever state you are in, you type the rate.

What do I type for the loan, the running costs and the sale?

Step 2, the loan. Two boxes: the loan rate a year, and the number of months of the loan. They are used only when the price is more than the down payment. The loan is the price less the down payment, and the monthly payment is worked out from the rate and the months.

Step 3, the running costs and the sale. All five boxes are optional and an empty box counts as nothing: maintenance a month, property tax a year, the growth of those two a year (one rate for both), the sale cost as a share of the value, and the tax on the gain at the sale as a rate you type.

What do I type for the rent and the investment?

Step 4. The rent a month, the growth of the rent a year, an optional rent deposit and the yearly return on what you invest. The deposit comes out of the same cash, earns nothing and comes back in full at the end. The tool checks that it is not more than the money paid up front.

Step 5, the taxes you type. Two switches start off. Turn on the investment tax if you want a tax rate on the investment gain, with an optional exemption in rupees. Turn on the loan tax if you want a deduction on the loan interest, with your rate and a cap on the deduction a year. With a switch off, that tax is not in the result.

A few of the tool's own limits: price from Rs 10,000, horizon 1 to 30 years, loan up to 360 months, loan rate up to 60%, and a yearly change in value between -20% and 30%. If a box is outside the range, the page marks it and says why instead of showing an answer.

Type this: the page's own example

Press Use example numbers. It fills in the figures below and leaves every tax and every optional cost empty.

Box	Value
Price / down payment	Rs 1,00,00,000 / Rs 20,00,000
Years to look at	15
Change in value	Rises 6% a year
Loan rate / months	9% / 240 months
Maintenance a month	Rs 8,333
Rent a month / growth	Rs 25,000 / 7% a year
Investment return	11% a year

I ran these numbers through the tool's engine. Amounts are rounded to the nearest rupee here, and the page also shows paise.

Line on the page	Result
Paid up front in all	Rs 20,00,000
Loan amount / payment each month	Rs 80,00,000 / Rs 71,978
First month out of the pocket, Buy path	Rs 80,311
Interest paid to the end (180 months)	Rs 84,23,480
Balance left at the end	Rs 34,67,425
Value of the property at the end	Rs 2,39,65,582
What the sale brings in	Rs 2,04,98,157
Buy path at the end	Rs 2,04,98,157
Rent-and-invest path at the end	Rs 3,02,23,577
Rent in the last month	Rs 64,463

The headline reads: "On these numbers, the renting and investing path ends Rs 97,25,421 ahead after 15 years." The crossover line says the buying path is not level with the renting path in any year of this horizon. The break-even lines say the paths end level at an appreciation of 8.43% a year, or at an investment return of 7.67% a year, with your other numbers as typed.

Notice why the loan balance matters: the loan runs 240 months but the horizon is 15 years, so about Rs 34.7 lakh is still owed at the sale and the tool pays it out of the proceeds. The page adds a note saying so.

Type this: a smaller flat with purchase costs, a deposit and a sale tax

Reset and type these. The rates for the tax on the gain and the stamp duty are placeholders I picked to show the boxes working. Use your own.

Box	Value
Price / down payment	Rs 60,00,000 / Rs 15,00,000
Stamp duty / registration	5% / 1%
Years to look at	10
Change in value	Rises 8% a year
Loan rate / months	8.5% / 240 months
Maintenance a month / property tax a year	Rs 3,000 / Rs 6,000
Growth of those two	5% a year
Sale cost / tax on the gain	2% / 10%
Rent a month / growth	Rs 22,000 / 6% a year
Rent deposit	Rs 1,00,000
Investment return	8% a year

The engine gives this.

Line on the page	Result
Stamp duty / registration	Rs 3,00,000 / Rs 60,000
Paid up front in all	Rs 18,60,000
Kept for the Rent path on day 0	Rs 17,60,000 (the Rs 1,00,000 deposit is held back)
Loan amount / payment each month	Rs 45,00,000 / Rs 39,052
First month out of the pocket, Buy path	Rs 42,552
Value of the property at the end	Rs 1,29,53,550
Sale cost / tax on the gain	Rs 2,59,071 / Rs 6,33,448
What the sale brings in	Rs 89,11,310
Rent in the first / last month	Rs 22,000 / Rs 37,169
Rent-and-invest path at the end	Rs 68,24,605

The headline here is: "On these numbers, the buying path ends Rs 20,86,705 ahead after 10 years." The crossover line says the buying path is level or ahead from year 4 and stays ahead. In year 1 the Buy path is at Rs 19,39,960 against Rs 22,61,951 for rent. By year 5 it is Rs 44,45,961 against Rs 40,67,929. The break-even lines are 5.84% for the yearly change in value and 11.18% for the investment return.

Compare the two examples. In the first, the investment return is 11% and the value rises 6% a year, and the Rent-and-invest path ends ahead. In the second, the return is 8% and the value rises 8% a year, and the Buy path ends ahead. Neither says anything about what will happen to you. They show how far the answer swings when four or five boxes change.

How do I read the result?

From the top of the answer:

• The headline sentence. Which path ends ahead, by how much, after how many years. If the gap is small, the page says the two paths end roughly level instead. The two small characters, Nook the house and Sprout the backpack, only mirror the same sentence.
• The two paths, year by year. A chart of both paths with the crossing marked, and a slider to move along the years. The crossover line says in which year the Buy path is level or ahead, and whether it stays there.
• Where the two paths end level. The break-even yearly change in value and the break-even investment return. If the paths never cross inside the range searched, the page says which path is ahead at every rate in that range.
• What would change this answer. Each change is re-run on its own: the loan-interest deduction off, the appreciation 2 points higher or lower, the investment return 2 points higher or lower, the rent growth 2 points higher and the loan rate 1 point higher. For each one the page says whether the path ahead changes. In the first example the renting path stays ahead in every one of them. In the second the buying path does.
• The working. Every step, from the numbers as typed through the loan, the monthly costs, the sale and the corpus of each path. Press Open the working, then point at a step and the numbers it used light up.
• The full tables. The year-by-year table, the loan and the sale, line by line.
• Take it with you. Download PDF, Copy link to reopen the same numbers, and a share image that hides the amounts unless you switch that off.

The page also lists its assumptions and what it applies to an empty box. Read them once. They are short.

How do I try a falling market?

Press Example: value falls. It is the first example with the value falling 3% a year and nothing else changed. The page words a break-even that is a fall as "falls", never with a minus sign, so you do not have to read signs. You can also pick Falls on your own number. The note "The property is worth less at the end of the horizon than it is today" appears when that is true.

What the tool does not do

• It does not model under-construction payment plans, GST on property, HRA, the Section 80C principal deduction, a joint home loan split, part-payments, floating-rate changes or home-loan insurance.
• It has no inflation figure. Every rate is constant for the whole horizon.
• It has no liquidity check. It does not ask whether the cash is there on the day it is needed.
• It does not give interest on the rent deposit, tax-loss carry-forward or indexation.
• It carries no tax rate of its own. Every tax is the rate you type.
• It does not find a break-even rent.
• It is arithmetic on the numbers you typed. It is not a forecast and not advice.

Last reviewed: October 2026. Not reviewed by a Chartered Accountant. For other tools, see the HeyArtha guides and the calculators hub. How HeyArtha's tools are built is on the Methodology page. If the cash question is about paying for something outright against an EMI, Cash vs Loan: Pay Upfront or Take an EMI? works the same idea for any purchase. A sale of property can attract capital gains tax, which is covered in Property Capital Gains: Indexation vs 12.5%.

Next in series: Prepay a Loan or Invest the Money: Loan Freedom, Box by Box.

Which number in your own case would you most like to test: the rent you would pay, the return you hope for, or how long you would stay?

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