estate market pulse

Rent vs Buy A House Simulator – Pro assistant for your decision making

Rent vs buy calculator: Just enter price, rent, loan, tenure, etc. Visualize buyer vs renter wealth in tables and charts.

August 29, 2026

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Estate Market Pulse · Companion tool

Rent vs Buy — Advance calculator

Same owner-occupier model as the article: equal starting cash, growing repairs, sale friction, and an investing renter. Change any number. The tables and charts follow. Defaults reproduce the published base case (−RM238k at 0.6% growth / 5.5% opportunity cost).

Your numbers

Article defaults are pre-filled. Open a group to edit.

Property & rent

Purchase price (RM)

Built-up (sq ft)

Monthly rent, year 1 (RM)

Hold period (years)

Loan

LTV (%)

Interest rate (% p.a.)

Tenure (years)

Other day-1 costs (RM) Stamp, legal, valuation, disbursements. Down payment is computed from LTV.

Apply first-home stamp exemption

Exemption amount (RM) Citizen/PR, first home, price ≤ RM500k, SPA by 31 Dec 2027. Article figure: RM11,250.

Owning costs

Maint + sinking (RM / sq ft / mth)

Assessment / year (RM)

Quit rent / year (RM)

Fire insurance / year (RM)

Repairs year 1 (RM)

Repair inflation (% p.a.)

Selling cost (%)

Growth, CPI vs opportunity cost

Price growth g (% p.a.)

CPI (% p.a.) Inflates rent, strata, assessment, quit rent and insurance every year. Repairs use their own rate above. Price growth g is separate (nominal).

Opportunity cost r (% p.a.) What the renter earns on the down payment + monthly gap. EPF-like default.

Wealth if the home is sold

Buyer = property value − remaining loan − selling cost. Renter = initial cash + invested monthly gaps, compounded at r.

Annual cash out

Ownership cash = instalment + strata + assessment + quit rent + insurance + repairs. Rent inflates with CPI. The gap is what the renter invests.

Year-by-year ledger

Same columns as the article. Intermediate “buyer net worth if sold” uses the full 2.5% selling cost every year so the path is consistent.

Sensitivity heatmap — Buy − Rent at terminal year (RM ’000)

Rows are price growth. Columns are the renter’s opportunity cost. Gold outline is your current (g, r) pair. Green = buying ahead; rust = renting + investing ahead.

How this is calculated

Both sides start with the same cash: down payment + day-1 costs (minus the first-home exemption if you tick it). The renter invests that stack at r from day one.
Loan is a standard reducing-balance mortgage. Monthly instalment is derived from price × LTV, rate and tenure — default RM2,148 on RM450,000 at 4% / 30 years.
Each year the renter invests the annual gap (ownership cash − rent) at year-end. That convention reproduces the published RM576k renter portfolio and −RM238k gap.
Repairs start at your year-1 figure and compound at repair inflation (default 3%), faster than CPI. Strata, assessment, quit rent, insurance and rent compound at CPI.
Buyer terminal wealth assumes a sale: value grows at g, minus remaining principal, minus selling cost. RPGT is treated as 0% (citizen/PR from year 6). Do not use this for a year-3 flip.
A first-home exemption lowers day-1 cash. The saved amount is no longer in the renter’s starting stack, which is why the published gap shrinks from RM238k to RM206k.

Source model: Rent vs Buy KL Condo: 20-Year Math, Not a Sure Win. This page does not give advice. It runs the arithmetic so you can see which assumption actually moves the needle — usually g, r, and whether the renter invests the gap.

Companion calculator for Estate Market Pulse. Owner-occupier comparison only — identical lifestyle, different balance sheet. Numbers are a model, not a prophecy.

Original post: Rent vs Buy KL Condo: 20-Year Math, Not a Sure Win