Rent or Buy in Manhattan
Comparing a mortgage payment to a rent cheque is the wrong comparison, and it always makes buying look obvious. This does it properly: it tracks what you would be worth on each path, year by year, counting the money a renter's down payment would earn in the market and the cost of getting out of an apartment as well as into one. The number that matters is how long you have to stay.
What the apartment costs.
Per month. What you would pay to rent something equivalent.
Filled in from the Manhattan average for a condo at this price. If you are looking at a real listing, use its number.
On these numbers
Buying pulls ahead in year 9.
Stay longer than 9 years and buying leaves you better off — by $229,298 if you stay 15. Sell sooner and renting would have won, because the $50,850 to get in and roughly $136,576 to get out have not been earned back yet. If you are not confident about 9 years in this apartment, that is the finding.
Owning, per month
$9,217
$7,783 mortgage + $2,988 charges + insurance, less $1,679 of tax relief on the interest
Renting, per month
$7,100
Rising 3% a year in this model
Cash to get in
$350,850
$300,000 down + $50,850 closing costs — the renter keeps this invested
Year by year
What you would be worth on each path, after selling the apartment and after tax on investment gains.
| Year | If you buy | If you rent | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $249k | $392k | −$142k |
| 2 | $306k | $433k | −$127k |
| 3 | $365k | $475k | −$110k |
| 4 | $427k | $519k | −$92k |
| 5 | $491k | $563k | −$72k |
| 6 | $557k | $608k | −$50k |
| 7 | $626k | $654k | −$27k |
| 8 | $699k | $701k | −$2k |
| 9 | $774k | $749k | $25k |
| 10 | $852k | $798k | $53k |
| 11 | $933k | $849k | $84k |
| 12 | $1.02M | $901k | $117k |
| 13 | $1.11M | $954k | $152k |
| 14 | $1.20M | $1.01M | $190k |
| 15 | $1.29M | $1.07M | $229k |
What this assumes
- Mortgage rate6.75%
30-year fixed jumbo, from Freddie Mac's weekly survey and current jumbo averages
- Apartment appreciation3% a year
Your outlook choice. Manhattan's median rose 4.2% in the year to 2Q26, and has been broadly flat across the past decade — which is why this is a choice, not a number
- Investment return6% a year
What the renter earns on the cash they did not hand over at closing, taxed at 30% on the way out
- Mortgage interest deduction40% marginal rate
On the interest on the first $750,000 of the loan, and only if you itemise. The property tax inside your maintenance is mostly lost to the SALT cap, so no relief is claimed for it
- Cost of sellingabout 6.5% of price
5% brokerage, 1.825% city and state transfer tax, and your attorney
- Rent and chargesboth rise 3% a year
Manhattan rents have been running hotter than this recently; building charges have been rising faster still
Rates checked August 2026.
What this does not cover
- Rent stabilisation. If you are sitting in a stabilised apartment, renting wins by more than any model will tell you.
- The building's own finances — an underlying mortgage, a looming assessment or a Local Law 97 bill can add hundreds a month to a co-op with no warning.
- Anything you would spend on the place: renovation, furniture, or the closet nobody has ever regretted building.
- Capital gains tax on the apartment itself. The federal primary-residence exclusion is assumed to cover the gain, which stops being true on a large gain or an investment purchase.
- The reasons people actually buy: security of tenure, a landlord who cannot ask you to leave, and being allowed to change the kitchen.
This is a model, not advice. It is only as good as the assumptions listed under the result, and two of them — what your apartment does and what the market does — nobody knows. That is why you can change them. Talk to your accountant before you act on the tax lines.
Confident about 9 years?
The number this model cannot supply is what the right apartment actually costs, and what the building's finances look like behind the maintenance figure. That is the part Josh does.
The numbers are the easy part
Everything on this page is public, computable, and on the page for free. What no calculator has is the part that actually moves a New York number: what a specific board has approved before, why the line above just traded 12% under, which seller will take a February closing. That is the conversation.