You are to create a spreadsheet that tracks the cash flows on a monthly basis of a person that had a home buying experience over a 10 year period and determine whether they would have been better off buying or leasing their home and investing in some other investment.

The scenario is as follows:

Pick a house from Zillow, Realtors.com, or any other website that sold in 2008 or 2009. Include a print of the page. Assume you sell the property today based on a current estimate.

The house was bought with an 80% mortgage with a 4% interest rate and 30-year amortization. Taxes and insurance in the first year were 2.2% of the purchase price. Initial rent is based on an estimate by Zillow as a percentage of your current value.

The investment can be anything you like, S&P Index, Bitcoin, Home Depot Stock, gold, etc (if you pick specific stocks, a stock cannot be more than 25% of your total portfolio). If you use a specific stock, you must track price, splits, and dividends.

Take the cash flows from the houses over time and compare that to the cash flows that you would have received had you not bought a house but rented a home and invested instead. Essentially, the scenario that provides you the greatest wealth at the end of the period is theoretically the better strategy.