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How this evaluator works

The model, the assumptions behind every number, where the data comes from, and what it deliberately leaves out.

What it does

It compares two paths over your mortgage term: buying a home, versus renting and investing the money you would have spent on ownership. Both people spend the same amount each month, so it is an apples-to-apples comparison. The headline is each path’s projected after-tax net worth at the end of the term, and the year (if any) when one overtakes the other.

How the comparison is kept fair

The buying side

The renting + investing side

The comparable rent is estimated from your home’s price within its region, not a flat regional average: each region has a benchmark price/rent pair, and we scale the rent by your price using a sub-linear price-to-rent relationship (rent ≈ price0.7), so a pricier home rents for more and a cheaper one for less — but gross rental yields fall as price rises, as they do in reality. That rent then grows each year. Whatever the renter saves versus owning is invested in a broad stock index at a long-run nominal return (dividends included). The owner does the same with any surplus after crossover. (Power users can still override the rent with the slider.)

Tax layer

Transaction costs

At purchase: province-correct land-transfer tax — Ontario (plus Toronto’s municipal LTT inside the city), BC’s Property Transfer Tax, Manitoba’s LTT, Québec transfer duties (with Montréal’s luxury tiers), the Atlantic deed taxes, and the nominal land-title fees in Alberta and Saskatchewan (which levy no LTT) — plus legal/inspection fees, with first-time-buyer rebates where applicable. At sale: ~5% realtor commission + HST + legal. The buyer’s up-front costs are credited to the renter’s invested lump to keep things fair.

GST/HST on new construction. Resale homes are GST/HST-exempt, so this only applies when you mark the home as a new build. A new home owes 5% federal GST (everywhere), plus the provincial HST portion in HST provinces. New-housing rebates claw a chunk back: the federal rebate (36% of GST, fully phased out by $450k); the 2025 first-time-buyer GST rebate (up to 100% of the GST on a new home ≤$1M, phasing out by $1.5M); and Ontario’s provincial rebate (75% of the 8% portion, capped at $24,000). Only Ontario’s provincial rebate is modelled — BC/AB/SK/MB are GST-only (so the 5% layer is exact), while Québec (QST) and the Atlantic HST provinces model only the federal 5% (their provincial rebates are out of scope).

Ontario 2026 temporary rebate (opt-in). For purchase agreements signed between April 1, 2026 and March 31, 2027, Ontario rebates the full 13% HST on a new build to all buyers (not just first-time): 100% up to $1M (so $0 tax), a flat $130,000 from $1M–$1.5M, declining to $24,000 by $1.85M. Tick “Ontario 2026 HST rebate” on a new build to apply it (Ontario postal codes only). It is off by default because it is a time-limited program.

Where the numbers come from

Regional assumptions are matched to your postal code: researched values for Toronto/North York and 10 Ontario CMAs (Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener–Waterloo, London, Windsor, Oshawa, Barrie, Kingston, Guelph, St. Catharines–Niagara) and an Ontario-wide tier. All ten provinces route to a province-correct tier (with metro tiers for Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montréal, Winnipeg, and Halifax); the territories use a national fallback. The 5-year mortgage rate is live from the Bank of Canada (cached, with an offline fallback). Anything regional can be overridden on the form. Note: outside Ontario the land-transfer/property-tax rules and rates, benchmark prices, and rents are data-grounded (WOWA 2025 / CREA / CMHC); only the long-run appreciation is a forward-sustainable estimate.

Market & regional data (evaluator/data.py)

Tax, insurance & transaction costs (evaluator/tax.py)

Key assumptions

Testing how sure the verdict is (Monte Carlo)

The headline verdict is a single most-likely path. The Monte Carlo panel on the results page stress-tests it: it runs the full model hundreds of times, each with home appreciation and investment returns drawn randomly (and mildly correlated) around their averages, varying year by year so the order of good and bad years matters (sequence-of-returns risk). The result is a probability that buying ends ahead, a net-worth fan chart (10th–90th percentile band around the median), and a histogram of the final gap. A band that straddles $0 means the verdict is genuinely uncertain. Because both paths scale together, that probability is unaffected by the today’s-dollars toggle.

What it deliberately leaves out

See knowledge/METHODOLOGY_GAPS.md in the repository for the detailed list of modelling gaps and decisions.

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