Run With Real Numbers
Rent or buy in San Clemente? Here is the math, including the parts that argue against me.
I am a real estate agent, so you already know which answer I am supposed to give you. Instead I built the model and published what it said, which is that renting is cheaper here month to month and it is not close, and that buying still wins if you are staying long enough. Both of those are true at the same time. Here is where the line sits and what moves it.
Start Here
A year of waiting for rates bought three hundredths of a point.
In July of last year the 30-year fixed averaged 6.70 percent. As of the week of August 13, 2026 it was 6.67.
That is what a year of waiting on the Fed delivered.
Here is what the house did in the meantime. The typical San Clemente single-family sale ran about $1,883,000 over the past year, against roughly $1,840,000 the year before.
One year, to July 2026
-
0.03
Points
The 30-year fixed came down from 6.70% to 6.67%.
-
$43,000
Price
Rise in the typical San Clemente single-family sale price, up 2.4%.
-
+$193
Per Month
Payment on that same home, today versus a year ago.
Run both changes through a payment and it gets blunt.
| Buying a typical San Clemente home | A year ago | Today |
|---|---|---|
| Typical sale price | $1,839,708 | $1,882,991 |
| 30-year fixed rate | 6.70% | 6.67% |
| 20% down | $367,942 | $376,598 |
| Principal and interest | $9,497/mo | $9,690/mo |
Principal and interest only, 20 percent down on a 30-year fixed. Taxes, insurance, and maintenance are excluded here and added further down. Prices are trailing twelve-month averages of the monthly median, not single months. See the sources section for why that matters here.
The payment is $193 a month higher today, on the lower rate. It also takes about $8,700 more cash to get in the door.
That is the part that gets missed. Rates and prices are not two separate things you get to wait on one at a time. They move against each other, and on this stretch of coast the price has been winning.
None of which means rates do not matter. A full point is real money. But you do not control it, nobody reliably predicts it, and the last twelve months are a decent argument that waiting on it is not a plan.
The Part Agents Skip
Month to month, renting here is cheaper. By a lot.
If you buy the median San Clemente single-family home today with twenty percent down, here is the real monthly number, not the listing-app number.
- $9,690 principal and interest
- $1,726 property tax, at a 1.1 percent effective rate
- $233 homeowners insurance
- $1,569 set aside for maintenance, at one percent of value a year
- Coastal Currents, July 2026: San Clemente market read
That is $13,219 a month, and $404,843 of cash to get in once you count closing costs.
Renting a house in San Clemente instead runs somewhere around $4,000 to $5,500 a month.
So owning costs roughly eight thousand dollars a month more than renting the same kind of home. Over a year that is around a hundred thousand dollars of extra outlay, and if you sell inside the first couple of years the costs of sale eat the appreciation you gained.
If you are going to be here three years, rent. The math is not close, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
I would rather say that out loud than have you find it out yourself after I collected a commission.
Now here is the other half, and it is the half that actually decides this.
Why It Flips
One payment freezes. The other one compounds.
The mortgage payment does not move. $9,690 a month in year one is $9,690 a month in year twenty. Property taxes are capped at two percent a year on the assessed value under Proposition 13.
Rent is capped at nothing.
And San Clemente rent has done exactly what you would expect on a coast people keep moving to. The Zillow rent index for San Clemente went from about $1,846 a month in July 2015 to $3,420 in July 2026. That is 5.77 percent a year, every year, without a single headline about it.
Run that same rate forward on what a house rents for here today.
| Rent today | Year 5 | Year 10 | Year 20 | Year 30 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4,000 | $5,295 | $7,009 | $12,283 | $21,525 |
| $4,750 | $6,288 | $8,324 | $14,586 | $25,560 |
| $5,500 | $7,281 | $9,638 | $16,889 | $29,596 |
Assumes rent grows at 5.77 percent a year, San Clemente's actual rate over the last eleven years. If rents grow slower, every crossover below arrives later.
The renter who is comfortable at $4,750 today is paying $8,324 in year ten and $14,586 in year twenty for the same house. The owner is still paying $9,690.
That is the whole mechanism. It is not appreciation and it is not timing the rate. It is a fixed payment against one that compounds.
The Answer
The year buying pulls ahead.
Both people start with the same cash. The buyer spends it on a down payment and closing costs. The renter invests it and never touches it. Then we watch who is further ahead each year, after costs of sale, and find the year the owner passes the renter.
The answer swings on two things: what you assume San Clemente appreciates at, and what the renter earns on the money they did not put down.
| Appreciation assumption | Renter earns 4% | Renter earns 7% |
|---|---|---|
| 0%, prices go nowhere | Year 32 | Never |
| 3.56%, the actual 20-year rate here | Year 17 | Year 24 |
| 5.00%, a middle case | Year 9 | Year 13 |
| 7.90%, the actual last-decade rate here | Year 3 | Year 4 |
Assumes $4,750 rent growing 5.77 percent a year, purchase at $1,882,991 with 20 percent down at 6.67 percent, and a 6 percent cost of sale on exit. The highlighted row is the most conservative honest read: San Clemente's appreciation rate measured over twenty years, which includes the 2008 crash.
That is a wide range, and I am not going to collapse it into one confident number to make this page cleaner. The honest summary is that the crossover lands somewhere between year three and year twenty-four depending on what you believe about the next decade, and the middle of the plausible range is roughly a decade.
Which is why the useful question was never whether it is a good time to buy.
It is how long you are staying. Three years, rent. Fifteen years, buy the right house when it shows up and stop refreshing the rate page.
Sensitivity
Which assumptions actually move it.
Every rent-versus-buy calculator hides its assumptions. Here are mine, and what happens when you change them. All of these start from the highlighted row above, a crossover at year 24.
| Change one assumption | Crossover moves to |
|---|---|
| Rent is $4,000, not $4,750 | Year 30 |
| Rent is $5,500, not $4,750 | Year 20 |
| Renter earns 4% on their cash, not 7% | Year 17 |
| Maintenance is 0.5% of value a year, not 1% | Year 21 |
The single most powerful input is not the mortgage rate. It is what the renter does with the money they did not put down. A renter who genuinely invests $404,843 and leaves it alone for twenty years is a formidable opponent on a spreadsheet.
A renter who spends it is not.
Straight Talk
Where this model is unfair to buying, and where it is unfair to renting.
You should know which way the thumb is on the scale. On this page it leans against buying, on purpose, because a model that flatters my own business is worthless to you.
Ways this is harder on owning than reality:
- No mortgage interest deduction. I model none at all. For a lot of buyers at this price point that is real money left out. Your accountant is the person to size it, not me.
- Full maintenance charged to the owner. The owner is charged one percent of value every year. The renter pays maintenance too, invisibly, inside their rent, and I do not deduct it from their side.
- The renter is a perfect investor. They put the entire down payment into the market and never touch it through any downturn or emergency. Very few people actually do this.
- No refinance, ever. The owner holds 6.67 percent for thirty years. In reality a fixed mortgage is a one-way option: if rates fall you refinance down, and if they rise you keep your rate. Renting has no equivalent lever.
Ways it is harder on renting than reality:
- Rent growth is assumed steady. Rents do not rise 5.77 percent every single year in a straight line. Some years are flat. The eleven-year average is what it is, but the path is bumpy.
- Appreciation is assumed steady too. The 3.56 percent case includes the 2008 crash inside the average, but it spreads it smoothly. Real markets do not. If you have to sell in a bad year, the crossover math does not care about your timing.
And two things no model captures. A landlord can decide not to renew, and you move whether that works for your family or not. A thirty-year fixed payment in a place where rent has doubled in eleven years is a hedge against your own cost of living, and that is worth something the spreadsheet does not price.
What I would tell you if you called. Do not start with the rate. Start with how long you plan to be in the house. If the honest answer is under about five years, rent and enjoy it, and put the difference somewhere it compounds. If it is ten or more, the length of the hold does the heavy lifting and the rate you got will matter less than you think.
This page is general information, not lending, tax, or investment advice. Every figure here comes from the sources listed below and from a model you are welcome to poke holes in. Your own numbers, your own tax situation, and the specific home will move all of it.
Assumptions and Sources
Everything behind the numbers.
- Sale prices. San Clemente, Residential Single Family, from California Regional MLS via InfoSparks, pulled August 17, 2026, with July 2026 the latest reporting month. The figures used here are trailing twelve-month averages of the monthly median, $1,839,708 rising to $1,882,991, up 2.4 percent. San Clemente closes fewer than fifty single-family homes a month, so the monthly median swings hard on which homes happened to sell: the last four months read $2,050,000, $2,237,000, $1,892,500, $1,874,950. Comparing any single month to any other would be noise dressed up as a trend, so this page does not do it.
- Mortgage rates. Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey. 6.70 percent is July 2025, where the weekly readings ran 6.66 to 6.72. 6.67 percent is the week of August 13, 2026.
- Rent levels and rent growth. Zillow Observed Rent Index for San Clemente, all homes, smoothed, July 2015 through July 2026. That index blends houses, condos, and apartments, so it is used here for the growth rate rather than as the rent on any particular home. The $4,000 to $5,500 range for a house reflects what I see in the local market.
- Appreciation rates. Zillow Home Value Index for San Clemente, single-family, mid-tier. 3.56 percent a year measured over twenty years, 7.90 percent measured over the last ten.
- Carrying costs. 1.1 percent effective property tax rate with the assessed value growing at the 2 percent Proposition 13 cap, $2,800 a year insurance growing 6 percent annually, maintenance accrued at 1 percent of value a year, 1.5 percent buyer closing costs, and 6 percent total cost of sale on exit.
- Payments. 30-year fixed, 20 percent down, no mortgage insurance, no HOA, no Mello-Roos. Plenty of San Clemente neighborhoods do carry Mello-Roos assessments, and where they apply they push the owning side higher than what is shown here.
Figures current as of August 17, 2026, using July 2026 MLS data. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. If your property is already listed for sale, nothing here is intended as a solicitation.
Run it on your numbers
Want this math on your actual situation?
Tell me what you pay in rent, roughly what you would want to buy, and how long you think you would stay. I will run this same model on your numbers and send it back. If it says keep renting, that is what I will send you. Same offer if you already own and want an honest read on where you stand. Text or email is the easiest way in.