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buying is Infinityx cheaper than renting
To begin our analysis, we compiled property data for around 3,100 American counties between 2009 and 2025. We started with median property prices from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), which asks its 3.5m respondents to estimate the value of their homes. Such data are available only until 2024. To approximate figures for 2025 we then used data from Zillow, a property platform. To estimate monthly mortgage payments, we assumed a deposit of 15% and an average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.
To estimate the cost of renting, we used fair-market rents published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which represent the typical cost of leasing a property in a given housing market. Like our mortgage payment estimates, these figures do not reflect payments by existing tenants, but the market rents that new renters in a given neighbourhood would face. Although data are available for properties of all sizes, we used a weighted average based on estimates of the existing housing stock published by the Census Bureau.
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