Rent or buy in Denver? The math on one Arvada home

Figures checked October 21, 2026. Rates, rents, and prices move.

The monthly cost

The example is a three-bedroom single-family home in Arvada at $650,000, just under Arvada’s September 2026 median single-family sale price of $668,700. A similar house rents for about $3,000 a month. Three-bedroom houses listed for rent in Arvada since July mostly asked between $2,600 and $3,500.

With 10% down at 7.40%, owning it costs about $5,500 a month.

Monthly cost of owning
Loan payment ($585,000 at 7.40%, 30 years)	$4,050
Property taxes	$354
Homeowners insurance	$359
Mortgage insurance	$195
Upkeep (1% of the price a year)	$542
Total	$5,500

Buying also takes about $84,500 up front: $65,000 down and about $19,500 in closing costs.

Month to month, renting this house is about $2,500 cheaper. What buying gets you shows up over years.

What buying gets you

Most of the payment is fixed. The loan payment, $4,050 of the $5,500, stays the same for 30 years. Taxes and insurance rise over time, for owners and landlords alike, and landlords usually pass those increases on at renewal.

Part of every payment is savings. Each payment lowers what you owe, and you get that back when you sell. On this loan it’s about $5,500 in the first year and grows every year after: about $32,000 paid down after five years and about $48,600 after seven.

Price growth is on the whole house. You put down $65,000, but the whole $650,000 home gains or loses value. If it rises 2% in a year, that’s $13,000. Denver metro prices are up about 12% over the past five years, roughly 2.4% a year, according to FHFA’s home price index, even after a dip of about 1% in the year to mid-2026. Nobody can promise the next five years, and the table below shows flat prices too.

You can refinance if rates fall. At 6%, the loan payment on this home would be about $3,500 instead of $4,050. Refinancing has its own closing costs and you have to qualify again. Buy a payment you can carry at today’s rate.

It’s yours. You can paint, renovate, and stay as long as you like. No landlord can raise the rent or sell the house out from under you.

How it adds up

This compares the buyer, after selling and paying selling costs, with a renter who keeps the $84,500 in savings earning 4% a year. A positive number means buying came out ahead by that much.

Yearly price growth	After 5 years	After 7 years
0%	renting ahead $45,000	renting ahead $37,000
2%	buying ahead $18,000	buying ahead $54,000
4%	buying ahead $87,000	buying ahead $156,000

At 2% to 4% growth a year, buying pulls ahead within three to four years. If prices stay flat, it takes about 13 years.

One kind of renter does better: the one who also invests the full $2,500 monthly difference at 4%, every month, for years. Against that renter, buying this home at 7.40% doesn’t catch up within ten years. A lower rate closes the gap. At 6% with 4% yearly growth, buying catches up in about nine years.

The math assumes 10% down on a 30-year loan at 7.40%, closing costs of 3% to buy and 6% to sell, and taxes, insurance, and upkeep rising 3% a year. Rent rises 2% a year, though Denver metro rents fell 2.8% over the past year, per Apartment List. Mortgage insurance is estimated at 0.4% of the loan a year and comes off when the balance reaches 78% of the price. Property taxes use the Jefferson County formula, and the actual bill depends on the address. No tax deduction is counted.

When renting makes more sense

• You might move in the next three or four years.
• Buying would leave you with less than a few months of expenses in savings.
• You’d invest the monthly difference, and keep doing it for years.
• The home you can afford now isn’t one you’d want to live in for five years or more.