Rent vs Buy in Plano in 2026: The Honest Math

Right now, in Plano, renting is about $1,350 a month cheaper than owning. That is the starting point of an honest conversation, not the end of one.

Most rent-versus-buy advice is written to reach a conclusion it already had. The version that ends in “stop throwing money away on rent” is usually written by someone who gets paid when you buy. The version that ends in “buying is a scam” is usually written by someone who has never priced what thirty years of rent increases does to a fixed income.

So here is the arithmetic instead, on Plano's real medians, at July 2026 rates, with every assumption named. The answer turns out to depend almost entirely on one variable - and it is not the interest rate.

The Monthly Gap, Priced Out

The median single-family home in Plano is about $507,600. The median single-family rent is about $2,750 a month. Put 20% down - $101,520 - and finance $406,080 on a 30-year fixed at 6.55%, the Freddie Mac weekly average in mid-July 2026.

That is a $1,357 a month gap, or about $16,300 a year. And it is a conservative version: it assumes no HOA, no MUD or PID, and a 20% down payment large enough to avoid mortgage insurance entirely. Put 10% down instead and you add PMI on top of a larger loan.

Two of those lines deserve a flag. The 1.71% tax rate is Plano's actual effective combined rate for the 2025 tax year - lower than most people assume, because Collin County has no hospital district. But it excludes MUD and PID levies, which are parcel-specific and can add a full point or more in newer communities. And the 1% maintenance figure is a convention, not a measurement: real spend is nothing for three years and then a $14,000 HVAC.

You can move every one of these inputs yourself. The rent vs. buy calculator is built on exactly these figures and lets you swap in your own rent, your own down payment, and your own city.

Why the Gap Is This Wide Right Now

A gap this size is not normal, and understanding why it opened tells you something about whether it closes.

Payments roughly doubled; rents barely moved. A 30-year fixed went from the 3s to 6.55%. On a $406,000 loan that is not a small adjustment - it is most of a mortgage payment in additional interest. Meanwhile Plano rent grew about 2.5% year over year, which is slow in nominal terms and roughly flat in real terms.

The reason rent stayed put is worth knowing, because it is temporary: DFW absorbed a record wave of new apartment deliveries. That supply is finite. Landlords competing against a lease-up special this year are not necessarily competing against one in 2029, and rent growth is the input most likely to surprise a renter on the upside over a long horizon.

Texas carrying costs are structurally high. No state income tax is paid for partly in property tax, and DFW insurance has repriced hard on hail and severe convective storm losses. Together, tax and insurance are about $1,104 a month on this house - nearly a third of the payment, and a third that never amortizes away. It is there in year 30 too.

What Owning Buys You That Rent Doesn't

The monthly gap is real, but it is not a fair comparison on its own, because part of an owner's payment is not a cost at all - it is a transfer into their own balance sheet.

Principal. In month one, about $364 of that $2,580 payment is principal. That is the honest number, and it is smaller than people expect: early amortization is nearly all interest. It climbs, slowly. Over the first five years it averages out to a little over $400 a month.

A fixed payment.This is the underrated one. The renter's $2,750 is a floor that moves up; the owner's $2,580 in principal and interest is frozen for thirty years. At 2.5% annual rent growth, that $2,750 is about $3,520 in ten years and $4,500 in twenty. Tax and insurance still escalate for the owner, but roughly two-thirds of their payment does not. Over a long enough horizon that divergence is the entire argument for owning, and it dwarfs the deduction arguments.

Appreciation. Which is where the whole thing gets decided.

The Assumption Everything Turns On

Here are two defensible numbers for Plano appreciation, and they point in opposite directions.

Over the last ten years, Plano home values compounded at roughly 6.0% a year. Over the last twelve months, they went down about 5.1%.

Both are true. The decade figure includes the extraordinary 2020-2022 run; the trailing-year figure is the market giving some of that back as rates repriced. Plano is not alone - every city in this metro is negative year over year right now, and the newer exurban markets are worse, with Celina down about 9.7%.

Why this matters more than the interest rate: on a $507,600 house, one percentage point of appreciation is about $5,076 a year, or $423 a month. Swinging your appreciation assumption from 6% to -5% moves the answer by well over $4,600 a year - more than the entire monthly gap we calculated. Every rent-versus-buy verdict you have ever read was, underneath, a bet on this one input.

Which is why the correct posture is not to pick a number but to know how sensitive you are to it. If your plan only works at 6%, your plan is fragile.

Where the Break-Even Actually Lands

Buying has a cost of entry and a much larger cost of exit. Going in, closing costs run about 2% of the price. Coming out, commissions, title, and seller-paid costs typically run 6% to 8%. So you begin roughly eight to ten points in the hole and have to earn that back before ownership beats renting.

• At 6% appreciation (the ten-year average): break-even lands somewhere in the five-to-seven year range. Buy, stay, and you win.
• At 3% appreciation (a cooler, more normal market): call it eight to ten years, and it is sensitive to what rent does.
• At 0%: the fixed payment and the principal paydown eventually carry it, but you are looking at well past a decade.
• At -5% (the trailing twelve months): there is no break-even. There is only a hole that gets deeper until prices turn.

Notice what that list is really saying. The question is not “should I buy?” It is “how confident am I that I will still be in this house in seven years?” That is a question about your job, your relationship, and your tolerance for a commute - not about the housing market. Most people can answer it honestly if they are asked it directly, and almost nobody is.

Who Should Buy Anyway

• You are confident about seven-plus years. Settled job, settled family, a school zone you want to stay in. The transaction costs amortize and the fixed payment starts working for you.
• You need a specific house rather than a unit. Plano's single-family rental stock is thin, and the good ones are not reliably available on your timeline. Sometimes the premium is buying the option to live in a particular place.
• The gap is genuinely affordable. If $4,100 a month is comfortably inside a real affordability check rather than at the edge of what a lender will allow, the downside case is survivable.
• You have the reserves. Six months of carrying costs after the down payment, so a bad year is an inconvenience instead of a forced sale into a soft market.

Who Should Keep Renting

• Your horizon is under three years, or you don't know it. A relocation that might reverse, a job in its first year, a company that has mentioned an office move. Renting is not a failure here - it is buying flexibility, and flexibility is worth about eight points of transaction cost.
• A 20% down payment would empty you out. Being house-rich and cash-poor in a market that is down 5% year over year is how people end up selling at the worst possible moment.
• The gap only closes if you assume 6% appreciation. Re-run it at 2% and see whether you still like it. If not, you don't like the deal - you like the forecast.
• You would be stretching to a payment that leaves no room. Property tax and insurance both escalate, and neither is negotiable.

None of this is an argument against owning a home in Plano. It is an argument for owning one on a timeline that survives a bad two years, which is the only condition that has ever actually mattered and the one that a 3% mortgage let an entire generation of buyers ignore.

Run your own numbers first. Then, if you want someone to check them against what is actually closing in your neighborhood, that is the conversation worth having.

If the buy side wins for you, the next decision is the loan, and it changes the monthly number this page just computed. Mortgage insurance is the part to look at rather than the rate: conventional PMI cancels by federal statute and FHA's premium does not, which over a normal holding period is worth more than the quarter point people shop for.