Hey everyone. I'm getting married this September and we are trying to map out our first major housing move here in Utah.

We've been heavily debating the classic choice: Buy a place and house-hack the basement, OR rent a cheaper apartment and aggressively dump our saved capital into index funds.

I was getting frustrated trying to model the multi-year opportunity cost on messy spreadsheets, so I spent the last few weeks building a free visual web app to run the deterministic math for me.

Here is the exact scenario I am testing in the dashboard right now:

Path A: Buy & House Hack
- Upfront Cost: $25,000 (Down payment & closing costs)
- Monthly Overhead: $3,200 (Mortgage, taxes, insurance)
- Monthly Income: $1,500 (Renting out the basement)
- Variables: Factoring in average property appreciation and tenant-assisted loan pay down.

Path B: Rent & Invest
Upfront Cost: $25,000
Monthly Overhead: $1,400 (Standard apartment rent)
The Strategy: Take that $25k cash we didn't spend on a down payment, plus the $300/mo we are saving on housing, and invest it directly into a investment portfolio. 

It's been wild to actually see the 10-year compounding net-worth lines on agraph rather than just guessing.

I just published the Version 1.0 of the engine and left it completely free and open. I would love for the real estate veterans and rookies to try it out.

What variables am I missing on the real estate side? CapEx? Vacancy rates?

You can play with the numbers for your own local markets here:
https://lovable.dev/projects/3b518d09-52c8-4c84-b985-df8cc80...

Let me know what I should add to the engine next!