High rents and low mortgage rates are maintaining low breakeven horizons, the metric that measures how long a resident must remain in a home until the accumulated costs of renting exceed those of buying.
Zillow’s Breakeven Horizon estimates are calculated down to the ZIP code level, and the study finds that in many counties in the United States, renting a home from six months to two years is enough to have costs exceed what the resident would have spent if they had bought the house.