Every renting family in Nepal eventually faces the same question: keep paying rent, or take a home loan and start paying an EMI instead? This free calculator settles it properly, modelling your actual net worth under both paths year by year, including home appreciation, rent hikes, maintenance costs, and what your savings could earn if invested instead of spent on a down payment. Adjust any number below and the verdict updates instantly.
Buy vs. Rent Ledger
(Buy or Rent?)| Year | Opening balance | Principal paid | Interest paid | Closing balance | Split |
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What This Calculator Covers
Use it to work out your monthly EMI for any loan amount, tenure, and interest rate; compare owning versus renting-and-investing over a 5–30 year horizon; save multiple property scenarios to compare side by side; and download a full year-by-year amortization schedule. Sheet 01 gives you a straightforward EMI calculator with a prepayment option; Sheet 02 is the full buy-vs-rent net worth model; Sheet 03 lets you save and compare scenarios; Sheet 04 gives you the complete amortization table with a CSV download.
Who this is for: anyone in Nepal weighing a home loan against continued renting, comparing two or more properties, or simply wanting to see how a prepayment or a change in interest rate affects their EMI and total interest.
Complete Visual Guide
Two paths to the same goal: growing net worth — through home equity, or through invested savings.
Before you start moving sliders, here is a plain-language map of how the tool is put together and what its central chart actually means.
The four working sheets of the calculator, and what each one is for.
Reading the break-even chart: before, at, and after the point where the two lines cross.
Why a Simple EMI-vs-Rent Comparison Is Misleading
Most calculators you will find online simply add up total EMI paid over 20 years and compare it to total rent paid, then declare owning the winner because you end up with a house. That comparison quietly ignores three things: the down payment could have been invested, the monthly gap between EMI and rent could have been invested too, and a home is not a static number — it appreciates (or does not) at its own rate, separate from your loan.
The tool above instead tracks two running totals every single year: your home equity (what the house is worth today, minus what you still owe the bank) against a renter's investment portfolio (the down payment plus every month's EMI-minus-rent saving, compounding at whatever return you choose). That is the comparison that actually matters, because both numbers represent real, spendable net worth.
How to Use Each Sheet
Sheet 01 — EMI Calculator: set your loan amount, interest rate, and tenure to see your monthly EMI, total interest, and total repayment. Slide in an extra monthly prepayment to instantly see how many years and how much interest you save.
Sheet 02 — Buy vs Rent: fill in the house price, down payment percentage, maintenance cost, and expected appreciation on the ownership side; then your current rent, expected yearly rent hike, and the return you would realistically expect if you invested your savings instead. The hero card gives you a plain verdict, and the chart shows exactly when — or whether — ownership catches up.
Sheet 03 — Scenario Ledger: once you are happy with a set of assumptions on Sheet 02, save it with a name (say, "Budhanilkantha apartment" or "Rented flat, Baneshwor"). Save a second scenario and tap both cards to see them compared in one table.
Sheet 04 — Amortization: see the full year-by-year loan schedule — opening balance, principal paid, interest paid, and closing balance — with a one-click CSV export if you would like to keep a copy or share it with your bank.
What Actually Moves the Verdict
Run the numbers a few times and a pattern becomes clear: the outcome is almost entirely decided by the gap between two rates — how fast the property appreciates versus what your savings could earn elsewhere. When home appreciation runs well ahead of typical investment returns, ownership tends to win comfortably, boosted further by the leverage of a mortgage. When a diversified investment return comfortably beats local property appreciation, renting and investing the difference can build more wealth, even though you finish the period without owning a house.
Rent hikes matter more than most people expect over a 20-year horizon, since even a modest annual increase compounds substantially. Maintenance costs on the ownership side are easy to underestimate too — a single percentage point of home value per year adds up across two decades. Try changing just the appreciation rate and the investment return in the calculator above, a couple of percentage points either way, and watch how quickly the verdict can flip.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is this calculator specific to Nepal?
- The number formatting uses the lakh/crore system common in Nepal and India, and the default figures are set around typical Kathmandu Valley rents and home loan rates, but every input is adjustable, so it works for any currency or city if you simply change the numbers to match.
- What interest rate should I use for a Nepali home loan?
- Rates change with monetary policy and vary by bank, so check your bank's current published home loan rate before relying on the output for a real decision, and use that figure in the calculator rather than the default.
- Does the calculator account for registration fees, capital gains tax, or rental income?
- Not directly — it focuses on EMI, rent, appreciation, maintenance, and investment returns, which are the four biggest levers in this decision. One-time costs like registration and stamp duty are relatively small next to a 15–30 year horizon, but you can approximate them by nudging the down payment slightly higher.
- Where is my saved scenario data stored?
- Scenarios you save on Sheet 03 are stored in your own browser and are private to you; they are not uploaded anywhere or visible to other visitors.
- Which is better — buying or renting?
- There is no universal answer; it depends on your local appreciation rate, the return you can genuinely earn on invested savings, how long you plan to stay, and how much you value the stability and forced savings that come with owning. Use the calculator with your own realistic numbers rather than the defaults to get an answer relevant to your situation.
This tool is for general educational and planning purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Home appreciation, rental growth, and investment returns are assumptions you control, not guarantees. Please verify current interest rates with your bank and consider speaking with a qualified financial advisor before making a home-buying decision.
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