NY Times Rent v. Buy Calculator

[chicagomeg]

Fellow Mustachians, I have a question for you...

I absolutely love the NY Times Rent v. Buy calculator. I assume some of you are familiar with it. (Link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html). Does anyone know how one might account for a duplex using this tool?

[grantmeaname]

Buying a duplex and renting out half of it vs. just renting half of a duplex?

[chicagomeg]

Ahh. Sorry. Buying a duplex & renting out half.

[chucklesmcgee]

Ahh. Sorry. Buying a duplex & renting out half.

I don't see a good way. If you have a lot of HOA fees or utilities or anything like that you can obvious take those down by at least the rent. Otherwise I'd just run the numbers and subtract rent*number of months from the ownership costs for any particular time point.

[destron]

Add your expected income from the rental to your income and treat it as a buy.

[chicagomeg]

The two units are identical, so maybe I could just split all the costs (down payment, taxes, etc.) in half, do one calculation if purchasing vs. renting makes sense and another if the property is a good investment.

[JohnGalt]

I would strongly recommend learning the math (and reasoning) behind the calculator if you are thinking about getting into landlording.  You're numbers will be more complex than what that calculator is meant to do and you should really know all the numbers, math, and their logic before investing.

[chicagomeg]

I understand the math behind it. I just don't feel like creating a whole complicated Excel sheet if something has already been created that I can build off of.

[grantmeaname]

That's sensible.