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Why the comparison is more complicated than rent versus mortgage

Comparing a rent payment to a mortgage payment directly is misleading, because a mortgage payment isn't the full cost of owning. Rates or council tax, maintenance, insurance and, for a house, the ongoing cost of things eventually breaking all sit on top of the mortgage payment. Renters don't carry these costs directly, even though they're often priced into the rent the landlord charges.

The opportunity cost of a deposit

A house deposit is usually a large lump sum that could otherwise be invested. If that money would have earned a meaningful return sitting in shares or another investment, that foregone return is a real cost of buying, even though it doesn't appear on any mortgage statement. This is one of the most commonly overlooked factors in a rent-versus-buy comparison, and it can shift the breakeven point by years.

The breakeven horizon

Buying tends to make more financial sense the longer you plan to stay in the property, because the upfront costs of purchasing — legal fees, moving costs, the deposit's opportunity cost — get spread over more years, and more of the mortgage shifts from interest to equity over time. If there's a real chance you'll move within a few years, the maths often favours renting, purely because those upfront costs don't have time to be absorbed. Run different time horizons through this calculator to see where your own breakeven point sits.