Methodology

House values

Every trajectory uses the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index — the all-transactions series, per metropolitan area, quarterly. A purchase in year Y is priced at Y’s average index level and scaled to the latest quarter: value = price × idx_latest / mean(idx_Y). The index is built from repeat transactions on the same properties, which controls for the mix of homes that happen to sell.

Mortgage math

Leverage uses the average 30-year fixed rate for the entry year (Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, via FRED), amortized monthly on a standard 30-year schedule. Equity today = scaled value − remaining balance. No PMI, points, refinancing, or tax effects are modeled.

The alternatives

The rent line grows your stated rent with this metro's HUD 2-bedroom Fair Market Rents (annual, FY1983 onward): every county in the metro's current delineation, the median across those counties, each year's level held for twelve months, summed month by month. A scenario that starts before 1983 falls back to the national CPI rent-of-primary-residence index (BLS via FRED) and the line says so. The market line puts the same down payment in the S&P 500 with dividends reinvested. Both are labeled on every page they appear.

If the market line is the regret you actually carry, the stock side of this question — the shares you sold, the coins you didn’t hold — has its own calculator at Wall Street Regrets.

Limits, stated plainly

A metro index is not your house: block, condition, remodels, property taxes, insurance, maintenance and transaction costs all move a personal outcome and none are modeled here. Fair Market Rents are HUD's benchmark — roughly the 40th percentile of gross rents for typical units, set per federal fiscal year — not your lease; HUD's percentile definition has shifted over the decades (45th in the early 1990s, 50th in some areas in the mid-2000s) and the series reflects HUD as published. Where a metro spans several HUD rent areas, the one named for the principal city is used. FY1984 is absent from HUD's consolidated file, so 1983 carries forward one year. Metro delineations are today's, applied to the whole history. The earliest years vary by metro. Nothing here is advice: it is arithmetic about the past.

Sources

FHFA HPI (all-transactions, metro, quarterly — public data; this site is neither endorsed nor certified by FHFA) · HUD Fair Market Rents (2-bedroom, FY1983–present — US government work) · Freddie Mac PMMS via FRED · BLS CPI rent via FRED · S&P 500 total-return series. Citation requested by data providers is given here and in every page footer.