The cost of moving vs renovating, line by line
Most comparisons stop at commission versus contractor quote. This page lists every cost on both sides with the source and date for each default, works through a $550,000 example, and explains why the one-time costs are only the beginning of the answer.
By Hearthfork Research · · Methodology
Key takeaways
- Selling a $550,000 home costs about $44,500 using current national defaults (5.7% commission, 1.5% seller closing, $5,000 pre-listing). Buying a $900,000 home adds roughly $30,000 in closing, moving and setup. None of it builds equity.
- A renovation's true cost is the hard cost plus contingency (default 15%) plus soft costs (design, permits, temporary housing) plus financing interest, minus the value it adds to the home.
- One-time costs decide the first year. The next nine are decided by the interest-rate gap on the new mortgage, the difference in carrying costs, and appreciation on two differently priced homes.
- Every figure here is a national default with a source and date, and every one is editable in the calculator. Commissions in particular are negotiable and vary by market.
The direct answer
Using national defaults current as of August 2026, selling a home costs about 7.2% of its price plus a few thousand dollars of pre-listing work, and buying the next one costs about 3% of its price plus the move. On a $550,000 sale and a $900,000 purchase that is roughly $74,500 of one-time cost. A renovation’s one-time cost is whatever you spend, plus contingency and soft costs, minus the value added; a $150,000 project with a 15% contingency and $14,000 of soft costs that recoups 60% of hard cost nets out to a loss of roughly $83,000. Which is cheaper over ten years depends much less on these figures than on the mortgage you would give up and the price of the home you would buy.
What it costs to sell your current home
| Item | Default | On a $550,000 sale | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total agent commission (listing + buyer side) | 5.7% of price | $31,350 | Clever Real Estate national commission survey (listing 2.88% + buyer 2.82%), Feb 1, 2026 |
| Seller closing costs (title, escrow, transfer tax) | 1.5% of price | $8,250 | Zillow — seller closing costs excluding commission (title, escrow, transfer tax), Sep 16, 2025 |
| Pre-listing repairs and staging | $5,000 | $5,000 | Zillow — typical pre-listing repairs and staging, Jun 1, 2025 |
| Total selling costs | ≈ 7.2% + fixed | $44,600 |
Commission is the largest item and the most variable. Clever’s February 2026 survey found a national average of 5.7%, split roughly 2.88% to the listing agent and 2.82% to the buyer’s agent. Since the 2024 settlement changes, buyer-agent compensation is negotiated separately, but sellers still commonly pay it to keep their listing competitive. Zillow’s September 2025 guidance puts all-in seller friction at 8 to 10% when commission is 6%; the calculator’s defaults imply about 7.2% plus pre-listing work. Transfer taxes range from zero to more than $10,000 depending on state and city, so check yours.
What it costs to buy the next home
| Item | Default | On a $900,000 purchase | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer closing costs (lender fees, title, prepaids, transfer tax where applicable) | 3% of price (range 2–5%) | $27,000 | CoreLogic/ClosingCorp and NerdWallet guidance (2–5% of price), Oct 31, 2025 |
| Moving (local 3-bedroom $1,200–3,200; long-distance $3,500–7,500) | $3,000 | $3,000 | Opendoor / moveBuddha — local 3BR move $1,200–3,200; long-distance $3,500–7,500, Apr 20, 2026 |
| Immediate repairs on arrival | $0 (user-entered) | $0 | n/a |
| Furnishing a new home | $0 (Block Renovation reference: ~$16,000, 2026) | $0 | Block Renovation guide, 2026 |
| Total buying and moving costs | $30,000 |
Opendoor’s April 2026 guide also suggests a 15% buffer on the move itself for incidentals, storage at $75 to $300 a month, and temporary housing at $100 to $250 a night if the closings do not line up. These are not in the defaults because they vary so much; add them to the moving-cost field if they apply to you.
What a renovation really costs
| Item | Default | Example | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hard construction cost (contractor estimate) | User-entered | $150,000 | Median U.S. renovation spend $20,000; 90th percentile $150,000 (Houzz & Home 2026, Apr 22 2026) |
| Contingency / overrun allowance | 15% of hard cost | $22,500 | Houzz & Home 2026 study — 37% of renovators exceed budget; common contingency 10–30%, Apr 22, 2026 |
| Design and engineering | ≈ 8% of hard cost | $12,000 | Calculator default proportion; replace with your architect’s fee |
| Permits | ≈ 1% of hard cost | $2,000 | Calculator default proportion; varies by jurisdiction |
| Temporary housing, furniture, landscaping | $0 (user-entered) | $0 | n/a |
| Total project cost | $186,500 | ||
| Value added to the home | 60% of hard cost incl. contingency | $103,500 | Derived from JLC/Remodeling Cost vs. Value 2025: additions ~32%, major kitchen 51%, midrange bath 80%, minor/cosmetic ~100%+, Jan 1, 2025 |
| Net unrecouped cost | $83,000 |
Two points are often missed. Soft costs such as design and permits are real cash but do not add to the structure, so the calculator excludes them from the base that value recapture is applied to. And the contingency is not optional padding: Houzz’s 2026 study found 37% of renovators exceeded their budget, and the calculator’s sensitivity analysis tests both zero contingency and 15 points more. The break-even guide covers how recoup rates differ by project type.
Financing costs on both sides
If the renovation is financed, the borrowed share becomes a second loan. The calculator defaults to the national average HELOC rate of 8.31% (Mortgage Research Center via Fortune, August 20, 2026); the 15-year home-equity loan average was 8.44% on the same date. In the worked example, half of the $172.5k hard cost is financed, or $86,250, over 15 years. On the move side, the new mortgage is priced at the rate you enter (default 6.67%, Freddie Mac PMMS, August 13, 2026) on the full new balance. The interest on that balance, compared with the interest you would have paid on your existing loan, is usually far larger than any renovation-loan interest. See the lock-in guide for the full treatment.
Ongoing carrying costs
Both homes incur property tax (default 0.9% of value, ATTOM 2025 analysis published April 9, 2026), homeowners insurance (default 0.6% of value, Insurify, August 10, 2026), maintenance (default 1% of value per year, industry rule of thumb) and any HOA dues. Tax and maintenance scale with value, so a $900,000 home costs about $17,000 a year in those two lines against about $10,500 for a $550,000 home, before the mortgage. Over ten years that difference alone approaches the entire commission. The calculator escalates each with appreciation and lets you add post-renovation increases in tax, insurance and maintenance on the renovate side.
Why the one-time costs are not the whole story
In the worked example, the one-time costs are close to a wash and actually tilt slightly toward moving: roughly $74,500 to sell, buy and move, against roughly $83,000 of renovation cost that the home’s value does not recoup. Yet the ten-year result favors renovating by about $357,000. The difference is the mortgage. Replacing a $300,000 loan at 2.75% with a $720,000 loan at 6.75% adds about $280,000 of interest over ten years and leaves about $72,000 more owed at the end. A list of one-time costs cannot show that, and it cannot show the opposite case either, where a downsizing household pays the same transaction costs and still comes out ahead because its monthly outlay falls.
That is why the calculator simulates both paths month by month rather than adding up line items. The line items are inputs; the answer is what they do over the years you stay.
How to use these numbers
Get a real commission quote from two agents and a real closing-cost estimate from a lender; both are more negotiable than the defaults suggest. Get a contractor estimate with a line-item scope and apply the contingency yourself rather than trusting the bid to include it. Then enter them in the calculator, which starts from the defaults on this page and lets you override every one.
Educational estimates based on your assumptions. Not financial, mortgage, tax, legal, appraisal, construction or real-estate advice.