Home | Newsletter | Advertise
loading...

4.5 Years is Breakeven Horizon For DC Area Homeowners

  • July 13th 2015

by Tianna Mañón

✉️ Want to forward this article? Click here.

4.5 Years is Breakeven Horizon For DC Area Homeowners: Figure 1
 Click to enlarge.

Area residents considering buying a home may be better off renting if they’re not planning to stick around for close to five years, according to Zillow’s latest breakeven research. The real estate site found that residents “would have to live in a home [for 4.5 years] before buying it would become more financially advantageous than renting it.” The national breakeven average is just below two years.

Zillow’s breakeven point is the time at which the initial costs of purchasing a home and its investment value outweigh the ongoing costs of renting. Zillow uses a number of factors in its breakeven horizon, including price and rent projections, maintenance costs, transaction costs and tax deductability. It assumes that buyers will put down 20 percent of the sales price.

Chevy Chase Village, a section of the tony Maryland suburb where homes regularly sell for millions of dollars, had the longest breakeven horizon at 31 years, more than double the Somerset neighborhood, where renters would need 15 years to balance the cost of purchasing. Seat Pleasant had the lowest breakeven horizon of 1.3 years.

See other articles related to: breakeven horizon, chevy chase, zillow

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/4.5_years_is_breakeven_horizon_for_dc_area_homeowners/10109.

DC Real Estate Guides

Short guides to navigating the DC-area real estate market

We've collected all our helpful guides for buying, selling and renting in and around Washington, DC in one place. Start browsing below!

First-Timer Primers

Intro guides for first-time home buyers

Red Flags Revealed During a Home Inspection Top 5 Tax Breaks For Homeowners Tax Relief for DC Homeowners
Condo Fee Tutorial What is a Rent Back? 10 Ways To Tell If a Home Renovation is Well Done
Obtaining a Basic Business License For Your Rental What is an Adjustable Rate Mortgage? The Splitting the Rent Formula
How Much Cash Do You Need to Buy a House? Is This Condo Building Financially Healthy? Interest Rates and Mortgage Points
The Scoop on Mortgage Insurance

Unique Spaces

Awesome and unusual real estate from across the DC Metro

The Most Intriguing Loft in DC The R Street Firehouse DC’s One-Room House
Dupont Circle’s Old Frat House To Become Alley Home Best Transition From a Garage To a Home The Roundhouse
Tilden Gardens Restaurant-Turned-Home Hits Market Next Week Logan Circle’s Most Intriguing Garage Frank Lloyd Wright Goes Green in Kensington
Sears Bungalow Gets a Modern Makeover Old Town General Store Becomes Three-Level Home Making the Most of a Skinny House
A Studio 27 Renovation on Capitol Hill Once a Carriage House, Now a Home The Bank that Became a Home
From Pie to Hooch to Heroin to Home The Live-Aboards of Gangplank Marina A Treehouse with Rock Creek Park As A Backyard
Modern Tranquility in Sperryville Saddle Up For Stable Living Throwing a Curve at 550 Square Feet
A Modern Hilltop Retreat Tilden Street Restaurant Becomes Spacious Home Focus on Design: A Vastu Unit at 22 West
The DC Area’s First Net Zero Home A Yankee Goes Green DC’s First Carbon Neutral Home
Eco-Friendly Alley House Off H Street The Gym, The Stables and The Firehouse