$2,140 Rent Felt Like Winning — the Seven-Year Column Said Otherwise
Our Pueblo duplex rents for $2,140. The townhouse we wanted would cost $2,690 a month at a 6.375 percent rate. Renting looked $550 cheaper until my spreadsheet hit year seven. Rent hits $2,631 by then; the mortgage never moves. We signed January 20 with $62,250 down. Cell K14 settles it.
Twelve seventeen at night on January 9, and the cursor was blinking in cell K14 of a spreadsheet named buyvrent-final-v3.xlsx, seventeen versions deep, while my husband slept ten feet away. K14 held one formula: cumulative cost of renting versus owning, year seven, both columns net of everything. The duplex we rent in Pueblo runs $2,140 a month. The townhouse we had been approved for would run $2,690 with everything in it. K14 said the gap dies in year seven. I sat there until one in the morning.
The deadlines had teeth. Our lease renewal sat in the inbox with a February 1 answer date: $2,140 becomes $2,230, or we give sixty days notice. The builder's rate lock window on the townhouse closed January 24. The $62,250 down payment was earning 4.1 percent in a savings account, and every week of my indecision had a price printed on it in two places at once.
Everyone at my office kept repeating that renting wins at 2026 rates, and month to month, at $550 a month cheaper, every single one of them was right. The spreadsheet did not disagree with any of 'em about this year. It disagreed about 2033.
cell k14
The file has one row per year and columns for both lives: rent with growth, own with taxes and insurance, the down payment's lost compounding, principal paid down, appreciation assumed at a modest 3 percent, and eight percent sale costs if we ever exit. K14 is where the running totals cross. Seventy-two versions of this file exist cuz my husband kept asking what happens if, and I kept answering with a new tab. Version 17 is the one with realistic assumptions and no revenge in it.
the $2,140 duplex
We have rented the west-side duplex since 2021, 1,450 square feet, and the same unit cost $1,650 when we moved in. Same unit. Four years, $490 more a month, a 30 percent rise, and Elena the landlord is not a villain in any of it, just a person watching the same market we are. The renewal letter this year was polite and said $2,230. I have zero complaint to file against anyone in this paragraph. That is exactly why the spreadsheet needed to exist.
what 6.375 percent costs
Price: $415,000. Down: 15 percent, $62,250. Loan: $352,750, thirty-year fixed. Principal and interest: $2,200. Property taxes: $242. Insurance: $104. PMI til we hit 20 percent equity: $144. Total: $2,690. The mortgage rate quote came from a broker in Colorado Springs on January 6 at 6.375 with no points attached, and it was only good thru the 24th of the month. I asked about buying the rate down twice and both answers involved numbers that made K14 worse, so 6.375 it is.
rent at $2,631, own at $2,690
Year one, renting wins by $550 a month, and it is not close. Year four, the gap is $311. Year seven, rent has compounded at 3.5 percent to $2,631 while the own column still says $2,690 plus whatever the county does to the taxes, and the lines touch. Year eight, renting loses and never recovers, because rent compounds forever and a fixed loan does not move. K14 puts the full crossover, sale costs and the dead $62,250 included, at month eighty-one. Eighty-one months. I had been treating the decision like it expired in twelve.
the down payment, earning 4.1 percent
The savings account is the strongest argument for renting, so I ran it three ways and let it argue with itself. Sixty-two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars at 4.1 percent compounds to approximately $83,000 across seven years, and K14 counts every single dollar of it against the case for buying. Even crediting the full amount, owning pulls even at month eighty-one and runs ahead every year after. Assume zero appreciation and the crossover slides out to year eleven, which was the scariest column in the file. Assume 2021's 8 percent and it flips by year five, which was the most dishonest one. I refused to use 2021.
what changed our minds
Nothin' theatrical happened. My husband looked at the month eighty-one row and asked what rent would be in 2033, and neither of us could answer him, and that long silence turned out to be the answer. We locked 6.375 on January 20, signed the build order with the $62,250 wired the same afternoon, and gave Elena sixty days notice that evening. If the mortgage rate drops a point by 2028 we refinance, and if it climbs, our number is already the number. Both of those sentences felt better than the renewal letter did.
February 1, one signature
The deadline came and went and Elena already has the notice and a new tenant lined up at $2,230, which, if K14 is right, is approximately our own cost of shelter in 2033 anyways. The build breaks ground in April and the rate lock carries us to closing. Cell K14 still says what it said at 12:17 that night, and nobody at my office has asked about it since I stopped bringing it up. That is it. That is the whole spreadsheet.