One question that comes to everybody’s mind when thinking of investing in a house is whether the investment will be worth it. Over the weekend I worked out a basic model that attempts to work out the financials in three different scenarios - buying a house and occupying it, buying and letting out and thirdly, not buying a house at all. Expectedly, we can see, that buying a house may turn out positive, on a slightly longer time frame of 5 to 10 years and when the macroeconomic conditions remain positive (real estate appreciates at a steday rate). This is a basic model and does not take into consideration the year to year variations in inflation, appreciation in real estate rates, expected increase in rentals etc. Please bear in mind that these do change and may have a profound impact on how an investment in real estate works out.

You can download the file here