Buying isn’t better than renting. Buying for long enough is better than renting. The only question worth answering is how long — and in Connecticut and Rhode Island the answer swings by years depending on which town line you land on.
Why this answer differs from every other rent-vs-buy calculator
The familiar national calculators compare your rent against a mortgage payment. That is not the comparison. A mortgage payment is what a lender quotes; a house is what you actually pay. This tool runs the ownership side through the same engine as our Connecticut and Rhode Island True Cost calculators — property tax at your town’s actual rate, insurance priced off the structure, an age-adjusted maintenance reserve, heat and power — so the number it compares against your rent is the real one. Run both tools on the same house and you will get the same monthly figure.
Three other things happen here that mostly don’t happen elsewhere.
The renter’s down payment goes to work. If you don’t buy, that cash isn’t sitting in a drawer. It’s invested and compounding, and so is every dollar by which owning costs more than renting each month. Leaving that out is the single most common way a rent-vs-buy tool tilts toward buying, and it moves the break-even by two to three years.
Selling is priced in, at your town’s rate. You do not capture appreciation until you sell, and selling costs real money. Connecticut charges a state conveyance tax of 0.75% on the first $800,000 and 1.25% above it, plus a municipal tax that doubles to 0.50% in nineteen eligible towns — New London, Norwich, Groton, Windham and Middletown among the ones in our footprint. Rhode Island charges $3.75 per $500 of the whole price, and another $3.75 per $500 on everything above roughly $824,000. Add a commission and the round trip is what pushes the break-even out past year five in most of these towns.
The mortgage interest deduction is usually worth nothing, and this tool will say so. The 2026 standard deduction is $32,200 for a married couple filing jointly. On a median-priced house in most of our towns, mortgage interest plus property tax doesn’t clear it, so the deduction changes nothing at all. That runs against decades of received wisdom and it’s worth knowing before you build a decision on a tax benefit you will never claim.
Why we give you a range instead of a number
A single break-even year on a ten-year horizon is false precision, and anyone who tells you “5.8 years” is selling you certainty they don’t have. The answer is dominated by two guesses about the future: how fast your house appreciates and what your money would have earned instead. Move appreciation from 0% to 5% and the break-even can shift by five years or more on the same house.
So the result shows three: what happens if prices go nowhere, what happens at your assumption, and what happens at 5%. If all three land inside the time you plan to stay, the decision is robust and you can stop worrying about the assumptions. If they straddle it, the honest answer is that this is a close call and it deserves a conversation rather than a calculator.
What this tool deliberately does not do
It does not guess your rent. You know that number to the dollar, and no dataset knows it better than you do — which is exactly why the field starts empty. The purchase price is the one where a town median genuinely helps, because there you are estimating.
It does not tell you to buy. Built honestly, a tool like this will sometimes say keep renting for now, and if that’s what your numbers say, that is the advice. Nothing about a house makes it a good purchase if you might move in three years.
It also leaves out a few things on purpose. The capital gains exclusion on a primary residence is large enough that it almost never binds at these prices. Rhode Island’s non-owner-occupied surcharge doesn’t apply, since anyone weighing this against their own rent is buying a primary residence. And no number here captures the part of the decision that isn’t financial: whether you want to paint the walls, whether the school matters, whether you’re tired of asking permission.
Where the numbers come from, and how fast they go stale
Interest rate — moves weekly. Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, published Thursdays. Your lender’s quote beats the national average.
Connecticut mill rates and revaluation years — set each spring, effective July 1. CT Office of Policy and Management. The town assessor is always more current than the statewide table.
Rhode Island tax rates — set annually. RI Division of Municipal Finance. Fire district rates come from the district or the town tax collector.
Conveyance tax — changed recently in both states. CT Department of Revenue Services and the RI Division of Taxation. Rhode Island’s upper-tier threshold is indexed to inflation and moves every January, so confirm the current figure before you rely on an exit cost.
Standard deduction and the SALT cap — reset annually. IRS inflation adjustments. The cap is scheduled to change again before 2030, which is inside the horizon this tool models.
Heating fuel and electricity — move constantly. Compare dealer prices by ZIP at CheapestOil or NewEnglandOil; rate information from the CT Office of Consumer Counsel and the RI Public Utilities Commission. Your own delivery ticket beats all of them.
Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Every figure produced by this tool is an estimate built from public data and general assumptions. It is not an appraisal, a loan estimate, an insurance quote, a tax determination, or investment advice, and no part of it creates a professional relationship or a representation of fact. Seaport Real Estate Services and Seaport Advisory make no warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of anything shown here, and accept no liability for any decision made in reliance on it. A break-even year depends entirely on assumptions about future home appreciation, rent growth and investment returns that nobody can know; small changes to any of them move the answer by years. Verify property tax with the town assessor, financing with your lender, insurance with a licensed agent, conveyance tax with a closing attorney, and all tax treatment with a CPA. Connecticut mill rates are OPM FY 2025–2026 except where a panel states a confirmed FY 2026–27 rate; Rhode Island rates are Division of Municipal Finance FY 2026 on the 2025 tax roll. Median selling prices and median home sizes reflect current Seaport Market Pulse data. Not tax, legal, insurance or investment advice.