Rent vs Sell Calculator

Use our Rent vs Sell Calculator to see what renting a property out and then selling it would leave you with — the rent you collect after expenses, plus what you gain or lose on the sale.

The net gain or loss is the monthly rent minus the monthly expenses, times the months you rent it out, plus the selling price minus what you paid. For example, renting for $1,500 a month with $400 of expenses for 24 months makes $26,400, and selling for $200,000 a home bought for $180,000 adds $20,000: a net gain of $46,400.

You can also work backwards. Choose Rental income, Expenses, Months, Selling price or Purchase price to find the value that gives a net you have in mind — for example, how many months of rent it takes to reach $50,000 (27.27), or the most you could pay for a home and still break even. When the sale is at a loss, the calculator also shows the month the rent covers it.

The formula keeps the rent and expenses the same every month and leaves out mortgage payments, selling costs, taxes and what the money could earn elsewhere, so treat the results as an estimate — add any of them to the expenses or take them off the selling price to count them. To weigh renting against buying a home to live in, use our Rent vs Buy Calculator; for a quick check of prices against rents, our Price-to-Rent Ratio Calculator.