Money
·8 min read
·April 8, 2026
Columbus: A $310,000 Home and a $270 Monthly Gap
Marcus and Priya have a one-year-old, a Short North 2BR they've outgrown, and a Clintonville 3BR in mind. Here's what the numbers say.
Marcus and Priya have been renting a two-bedroom in Short North for four years, paying $2,500 a month in one of Columbus's most desirable neighborhoods. They have a one-year-old daughter in the second bedroom and no room left to grow into.
They found a three-bedroom cape cod in Clintonville while they were still telling themselves they had time. A tree-lined street, a yard, an elementary school four blocks away, ten minutes from everything they already use. At $310,000 it was the obvious next step.
They have $42,000 saved. Enough for 10 percent down plus closing costs. They want to buy. What they want to know is whether the numbers actually hold up.
What buying this home actually costs per month
The mortgage payment is the number people plan around, but it's only part of what ownership costs. Property tax, home insurance, and maintenance are fixed parts of the picture for any buyer.
There's no HOA, which keeps the number cleaner than a condo would. But Marcus and Priya are putting 10 percent down, which means PMI. At 10 percent down, that's roughly $129 a month until they reach 20 percent equity. At 3 percent annual appreciation that happens around year 4.
Ohio's property tax rate runs higher than buyers in lower-tax states expect. At 1.40 percent on a $310,000 home, that's roughly $362 a month. It's one of the real carrying costs to plan around.
Maintenance is the cost that catches buyers off guard. A 1960s cape cod will eventually need a furnace, a roof section, a window. Marcus and Priya's $4,500 annual maintenance budget is what those costs average out to over time.
Those costs stack on top of a $1,800 mortgage and bring the true monthly cost of ownership to around $2,790.
Their rent today is $2,500. The ownership premium is roughly $270 a month, and it's the reason the math here works differently than in most markets. It will come up again.
The inputs below are pre-filled with Marcus and Priya's numbers.
The Month 1 card at the bottom shows the full picture. If your situation looks different, adjust any input and the numbers update in real time.
Buying
The Property
The Loan
Ongoing Costs
Renting
Month 1 Cost Breakdown
True cost of each path in the first month
Buying
Renting
$275/mo more to buy than to rent in month 1
The forced savings argument, and when it actually kicks in
One of the most common cases for buying over renting is that a mortgage builds equity while rent builds nothing.
That's true over time... in the early years the picture is more complicated.
In month one of Marcus and Priya's mortgage, about $1,569 of their $1,804 payment goes to interest! The remaining $235 reduces what they owe on the loan, converting slowly into ownership while the rest covers the cost of borrowing the money.
It takes roughly 21 years before the principal portion of each payment overtakes the interest portion. The equity build accelerates meaningfully in the back half of the loan, not the front.
Where Your Mortgage Payment Goes
Interest vs. principal by year — $279K loan at 6.75%, 30-year fixed
5.5%
$291,292
total interest
6.75% ← Marcus & Priya
$372,454
total interest
8.0%
$457,994
total interest
At 10% down, Marcus and Priya also pay PMI of ~$129/mo until their equity reaches 20%. At 4% annual appreciation, the model estimates that happens around year 3.
At 6.75%, Marcus and Priya will pay around $370,000 in interest over 30 years on a $279,000 loan. At 5.5% that number drops to around $291,000. At 8% it exceeds $458,000. Small differences in the rate you lock in compound into enormous differences in what the home actually costs you over time.
What each path builds over twenty years
The amortization chart showed the cost side of buying. This step looks at the other side – what Marcus and Priya actually accumulate under each path over time.
If they buy, their $31,000 down payment converts into equity that grows as the loan pays down and the home appreciates. The $270 monthly ownership premium they pay relative to renting is the cost of that equity growth. If they keep renting, the $31,000 goes into a portfolio instead, and the $270 they are not spending on the ownership premium gets reinvested alongside it every month.
Marcus & Priya: Home Equity vs. Renter Portfolio Over 20 Years
The lines cross early in year 2 and the renter portfolio never builds a meaningful lead.
The reason is the $270 gap. When renting costs nearly as much as owning, the down payment goes to work almost immediately rather than spending years recovering a large monthly cost difference. The buyer's equity compounds on a $310,000 asset from day one. The renter is compounding on $31,000 plus $270 a month in savings. The math favors the larger asset base.
Columbus has been appreciating at around 3 to 6 percent in recent years, according to Redfin market data. The projection uses 3 percent as a conservative forward estimate. Buying doesn't require a hot market to win here because the case rests on leveraged appreciation of a $310,000 asset, not on rent inflation making renting unaffordable over time.
The portfolio return assumes 7 percent annually, roughly the inflation-adjusted average return of the S&P 500 over the past 100 years.
The apples-to-apples comparison
IRR (internal rate of return) is how the calculator reduces both paths to a single comparable number. It is the annualized return on the capital Marcus and Priya put in on day one, under each path.
Buying is the stronger financial path over 10 years.
Buyer IRR
14.6%
After-tax proceeds: $157,794
Renter IRR
5.3%
After-tax proceeds: $67,509
The gap between both paths at these inputs isn't close. The question is whether it holds across different assumptions.
How Sensitive Is This?
IRR advantage by home appreciation rate vs. market return rate, at a 10-year horizon
| Home Appreciation | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2% | 3% | 4% | 5% | 6% | |
| 5% | +8.2% buy | +11.5% buy | +14.3% buy | +16.8% buy | +19.1% buy |
| 6% | +7.1% buy | +10.4% buy | +13.2% buy | +15.7% buy | +18.0% buy |
| 7% | +6.1% buy | +9.3% buy | +12.1% buy | +14.6% buy | +16.9% buy |
| 8% | +5.0% buy | +8.2% buy | +11.1% buy | +13.5% buy | +15.8% buy |
| 9% | +3.9% buy | +7.1% buy | +10.0% buy | +12.4% buy | +14.7% buy |
Each cell reruns the full projection at that combination of rates. All other inputs are held constant.
At Columbus's low monthly ownership gap, buying wins across most of the grid even at modest appreciation. Renting only pulls ahead when appreciation falls to 2% or below while market returns run high.
Every cell in the grid favors buying. At a monthly ownership premium of roughly $270 and a $310,000 asset appreciating at even modest rates, the math holds across the full range of realistic scenarios. Columbus doesn't need to be a hot market for buying to make sense here.
When the math and the life decision point the same way
Marcus and Priya came to the numbers wanting a reason to buy. The numbers gave them one.
That's the unusual case. In most expensive markets, buying requires either a long time horizon or strong appreciation assumptions to make financial sense. In Columbus, neither condition applies. Both the math and the instinct are pointing the same way, and it's worth being clear about why.
The math works in Columbus because the gap between owning and renting is small enough that it never gives renting a sustained financial lead. At $270 a month, the ownership premium doesn't compound into the kind of advantage that would require years of appreciation to overcome.
What the math doesn't capture is everything else: a yard, a school district, a housing payment that doesn't change when the landlord decides it does. Those things reinforce the financial case rather than complicating it.
The early years have real costs. PMI, Ohio's property taxes, the maintenance surprises that come with a 1960s home are all worth planning for, and none of them change the verdict.
Run your own numbers →