Disclaimer.

Tenure is a financial-education tool. It is nota registered investment adviser, a broker-dealer, a bank, a real-estate agent, or a mortgage lender. Nothing on this site — including the calculator output, city pages, blog posts, methodology page, or any email we send you — constitutes personalized investment, tax, legal, or real-estate advice.

The calculator describes a modelof rent-vs-buy outcomes under the inputs you supply and historical data drawn from public sources. It is a way to make the underlying math visible and changeable; it is not a prediction of what your specific situation will look like ten years from now. The future of mortgage rates, home prices, rent levels, and tax law is unknowable. Treat the verdict as one input into a larger decision — not as the decision itself.

Every calculator run ends with a single-word verdict — BUY, RENT, or TOO CLOSE TO CALL. That verdict is a model conclusion, not a recommendation. It is the answer to a specific math question: under your stated inputs and the historical data we use, does the buyer's cumulative cost path beat the renter's within your expected stay?

The model cannot incorporate the rest of the decision — job security, relationship status, risk appetite, how much you enjoy yard work, how confident you are about staying in this city, whether you'd be a landlord if you move out. For decisions involving large sums (any home purchase qualifies), consult a CFP for the financial side, a CPA for the tax treatment, and an attorney for the contract. The calculator is meant to anchor those conversations, not replace them.

City-level numbers come from public, named sources: Zillow Research for the home-value index (ZHVI) and rent index (ZORI), FRED for the 30-year fixed mortgage rate, the Tax Foundation for state effective property-tax rates, and the NAIC for state-level average homeowners-insurance premiums.

We refresh the underlying series weekly via an automated pipeline. The “Last reviewed” date stamp on every results page and city page reflects the most recent successful ingest. Past performance of any of these series does not predict future performance.

When the verdict suggests buying (and on city pages that lean toward buying) we sometimes display links to mortgage-marketplace partners — currently LendingTree, Credible, and Rocket Mortgage. If you click one of those links and ultimately convert (request a quote or take out a loan), we may receive a referral commission. This does notchange the rate you're offered; the commission is paid by the marketplace out of their marketing budget.

The verdict itself is determined entirely by the calculator math — independent of partner economics. We do not take direct compensation from individual lenders in exchange for recommending their products, and we do not change the order of, or the language about, the marketplaces based on payout. We disclose the affiliate relationship next to every such link.

Anything you read on Tenure about future mortgage rates, future home prices, future rent levels, future inflation, or future tax law is a projection, not a prediction. Our scenarios (“rates fall”, “rates flat”, “rates climb”) are bounded sensitivity sketches, not forecasts. Use them to understand how much the verdict depends on your assumptions, not to plan around a specific path.

The optional Monte Carlo overlay samples historical monthly rate-and-inflation data from 1928 onward and produces a distribution of paths. That distribution is a description of what has happened before, statistically; it does not know what 2027 holds. Treat the resulting probability bands as “here is how a reasonable range looks,” not as “here is what will happen.”

We will make mistakes. If you spot a methodology error, a stale citation, or a number that contradicts a primary source, email hello@tenure.house with the URL and the specific correction. Errors that materially affect a verdict are corrected within 72 hours of confirmation. Every correction is logged publicly on our about page so you can audit our track record over time.

We may update this disclaimer from time to time. The current version is reflected in the “Last reviewed” date at the top of this page. We will not change the substance of this disclaimer without bumping that date and noting the change in the next newsletter to subscribers.

Tenure is a service of Hyper Mind Technologies, LLC, a Florida limited liability company. Questions about this disclaimer: hello@tenure.house.