Does owning beat renting on pure monthly cash? Enter the price, the rent for a comparable home, and your deposit.
Written and checked by the Loankira editorial team
Last reviewed 23 October 2026. Figures follow Malaysian bank practice and the published statutes; where a bank sets its own policy we say so. How we check a page · Who writes here
Compares pure monthly cash: instalment vs rent on a full amortising loan. Upfront costs, opportunity cost of the down payment, maintenance and rent inflation matter too — this verdict is the first filter, not the last. Take-home after tax is the figure both sides are paid from, so the verdict only holds when rent and instalment are weighed against it.
Take a RM450,000 house with a 10% deposit, a 4.3% rate over 35 years and rent of RM1,800 for a comparable unit. The loan is RM405,000 and the instalment is RM1,866.84 a month. Over ten years that is RM224,020 in instalments, before the RM45,000 deposit, RM8,000 stamp duty on the transfer and RM2,025 stamp duty on the loan agreement.
Renting the same house costs RM216,000 over the same ten years and leaves the RM45,000 deposit in your account, where 3.5% a year turns it into about RM63,477. Buying therefore costs roughly RM33,000 more in cash over the decade, but by year ten a large part of every instalment has become equity in the house rather than a landlord's income.
| Item | Value used |
|---|---|
| Price and deposit | RM450,000, 10% down |
| Rate and tenure | 4.3% p.a., 35 years, full amortisation |
| Rent | RM1,800 for a comparable unit |
| Return on the unspent deposit | 3.5% p.a. |
| Excluded | Maintenance, assessment, quit rent, insurance, MRTA, capital growth |
Tenure. Stretching to 35 years lowers the instalment but raises total interest; a 30-year tenure at the same rate pushes the instalment to about RM2,004 and the comparison moves against buying.
Rent relative to price. Below roughly 0.35% of the price per month, owning usually wins on cash; above it, renting plus investing the difference tends to win. RM1,800 on RM450,000 is 0.40%, which is why the example is close.
How long you stay. Stamp duty, legal fees and the loan's front-loaded interest are all paid early. Under five years, buying rarely recovers them.
Rate movement. A flexi or semi-flexi loan reprices with the base rate. Add 1% to the rate above and the instalment rises by about RM240 a month.
Instalments use the standard amortisation formula, stamp duty follows the Stamp Act 1949 First Schedule (1% on the first RM100,000, 2% on the next RM400,000) and the loan agreement duty is 0.5% of the facility. The calculator applies the same formulas live, so your own figures replace the example as soon as you type.
Rates: housing loan rates, tracked monthly · Embed: free instalment calculator widget · About · Editorial policy