This France rent vs buy calculator answers the question every French househunter asks: over the years you actually plan to stay, does buying build more wealth than renting and investing the difference? It bakes in the things that make France distinctive — the heavy frais de notaire, the taxe foncière, and typical mortgage and appreciation rates.
How it works
The calculator runs two parallel scenarios over your time horizon.
Buying starts with the deposit plus acquisition costs (frais de notaire, about 7.5% on an existing home). It amortises the mortgage, accrues interest, and pays annual holding costs — taxe foncière, syndic, insurance and maintenance, roughly 2% of value a year. At the horizon it sells the home at the appreciated value, deducts about 7% selling costs and the remaining mortgage balance, leaving your equity.
Renting invests the cash you did not tie up in a deposit and acquisition costs, then each month invests the difference between the owner’s total outflow and the rent, compounding at your chosen investment return. Rent grows each year. The end balance is the renter’s net worth.
The tool reports both figures and the winner.
Example
Buy a EUR 300,000 home with a EUR 30,000 deposit at 3.5%, staying 10 years, versus renting the same place for EUR 1,100/month. With 2.5% appreciation and a 4% investment return, the large EUR 22,500 acquisition cost weighs on the early years, but a decade of appreciation and equity build usually tips the result toward buying — change the appreciation or horizon and watch the answer flip.
Notes
This is a simplified model: it assumes you sell at the horizon, ignores capital-gains tax on investments, and treats rates as fixed. Its real value is showing what drives the decision — entry costs, how long you stay, and the gap between appreciation and investment returns.