What is the Fuss?

Apartment living is the norm nowadays. Changing jobs in a couple of years is common. With change in jobs, comes change of work location, either a different city or a different part of the same city. Nowadays, folks prefer to live close to their workplace in order to avoid long, excruciating daily commute. This leads to frequent change of apartments. But what about the furniture and appliances in these apartments?

Will you buy furniture/appliances, or rent it out? Many furniture rental platforms have sprouted up, and are present in all metro cities in India. In this post I calculate the cost tradeoff of buying vs renting furniture, and lay down a framework for you to decide which option to go for. Lets get furnishing!

Cost of Renting vs Buying Furniture

There are many rental furniture portals. Some of the prominent ones are Cityfurnish, Rentmojo, Furlenco. To compare costs of renting vs buying, I will select two furniture types, and compare their rent cost vs buying cost. I will try to derive how many months of rent does it take to equate the buying cost of that furniture.

Single Sofa Recliner

A single recliner sofa is a comfortable, often present furniture type in today’s living room. Binging on Netflix, surfing social media, or just reading a book, a recliner sofa is the cosy comfortable spot to sit/incline/lay down on.

A basic recliner sofa will cost you around INR 649/- per month in Bangalore. This is for a 12 month rental. For a shorter rental, the monthly rent will slightly increase.

Now lets look at buying option for a similar looking basic style recliner sofa. I have chosen Pepperfry as it has wide collection. It will cost you around INR 15k if you were to buy a similar sofa online (refer image below).

Hence, it takes around (14,959/679), or 22 months of renting to equate the buying cost of this furniture. This means that if you rented this sofa recliner for 2 years, you might as well have bought a new one.

Lets see one more rental furniture.

4 Seater Dining Table Set (Wooden)

On rental platform (Cityfurnish), you get a basic 4 seater solid wood dining table set for INR 940/- per month.

A similar, solid wood dining table set on Pepperfry costs INR 19,500 (refer image below).

So, the months of rent it takes to buy a brand new dining table & chair set is 19,500/940, or 21 months.

This is similar to the recliner sofa.

For different sets of furniture, the number of months of rental payment it takes to buy a similar furniture may vary. It is typically between 1.5 to 2 years.

Adjusting for resale value of Bought furniture

In the earlier section we saw that it takes 2 years of monthly rental payments to match buy price of a furniture. However, there is a small twist.

Once you have bought a furniture, you can sell it as well. There can be different reasons for selling. You might be upgrading to a new one, you might be moving out of the apartment, or you just want to declutter your apartment and the furniture in question did not make the cut.

Selling furniture is easy as well. If you live in any large society in a metro city which uses Adda app, or MyGate app, just post it on the app for resale, and get it sold. Societies which do not use these apps typically have WhatsApp groups, where you can post and sell used furniture.

On some apps such as MyGate, you get the flexibility to post a used furniture sale in same society, as well as nearby societies.

Typically, you can expect 30–40% resale value of a furniture in good condition. Taking a conservative estimate of 20% resale value, our equation of rental furniture vs buying changes now.

Revising the Years it take to buy a furniture vs accumulated rental costs

Lets recalculate the years it takes to buy a furniture by revising the buy price to 80% of listed price online (assuming a conservative 20% resale value).

Hence, for the sofa recliner it becomes: (14,959 x 0.8)/679 = 18 months, or 1.5 years.

For dining table set, it becomes: (19,500 x 0.8) / 940 = 17 months ~ 1.5 years.

Hence the revised years it takes to buy a new furniture vs renting is 1.5 years.

Now, making a decision between renting vs buying is becoming easier. Will you, certainly, be using your furniture for more than 1.5 years? If yes, then buy, else rent. In the next section I will cover some situations where renting furniture does make sense.

Reasons to Rent Furniture

Reason 1: You are new in Town

You just moved into a new town, for a job or higher studies. Your first rental place will be temporary. You will take time to know the city, livable locations, and your preference. A place near great night life, or a place with less noise and more peace and greenery? As you make this choice, your temporary place will either be a long term airbnb, or a 11month rental lease flat.

If you are in this bucket, buying furniture right away may not make sense. As your plan to stay in a temporary place is less than a year, renting furniture is a better option. You will get a brand new furniture, that fulfils your need (sleeping bed/sitting sofa, study table etc.). Renting also gives you flexibility of tenure of rent, varying from as low as 3 months to 1 year. Renewing the rental time period is as easy as a couple of taps on your smartphone.

Reason 2: You know you will move out in less than a year

There can be many reasons for you to be sure that you will be moving out of your current flat in less than a year. It can be to start your MBA or PhD, or to move to client city for a 9 month project. It can even be a 1 year contract job with a startup/MNC.

Once you know that you are moving out soon, no point in buying a new furniture. Rent it out, for the time period you need.

Reason 3: Sharing Apartment with other Flatmates

Many of us start our career living with flatmates, from same college or working in same company, or just friends :-).

While living with flatmates, there is high churn. Flatmates will come and go as they find new jobs, get married, go for higher studies etc. With this high churn, buying furniture might be a higher cost to bear. Rather, go for rental furniture and split the monthly rent among the flatmates.

Reason 4: Frequent Traveling Job

Does your job require frequent travel? You are out Monday to Friday to meet clients, and work at their location? Or 9 out of 12 months in the year you relocate to work on an onsite client project?

In a frequent traveling job, you might want to choose which furniture to buy, and which to rent. Buying core furniture such as beds etc. might make sense. Whereas non-core furniture such as decorative furniture, plant stands etc. can be rented.

How do you define core or non-core furniture is a personal choice.

Reason 5: Trying out a furniture

This is an interesting reason, as I did not realise this untill it happened to me. It was a recliner sofa. After watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S sitcom, I yearned for a recliner sofa similar to what Joey and Chandler had in the sitcom. However buying a recliner sofa seemed too big of an investment (starting at INR 15k/-).

So, I went for a rental recliner sofa. Costed me less. Allowed me to try using this, figuring out where does it fit well in my living room. This also gave me time to increase my savings to be able to buy a higher quality recliner sofa a year later.

If you fall in a similar bucket, then renting a furniture for shorter time (6–12 months) make sense. This also gives you time to explore and make up your mind on the type and design of furniture you need.

Bonus Reason: You do not like maintaining furniture

If you are like me, you probably do not like the maintaining part. Furnitures need constant maintenance. They require frequent dusting. They need a wood sepcific shiner and cleaner every week or so. Then you have to do deep cleaning once every 3–4 months to detect and get rid of termites. The list can go on.

With rental furniture, it is ok to be a little sloppy. As long as your furniture isn’t broken, you can replace it after a 6/9/12 month rental plan with a new one, maybe in a different colour or design.

Having looked at top reasons to rent furniture, now lets look at top reasons to Buy Furniture.

Reasons to Buy Furniture (vs renting)

Listing some of the top reasons to choose buying over renting furniture.

Reason 1: Settling down with family & kids

There comes a time, when you leave behind your happening nomadic life. You start a family, have kids, find a good apartment closer to schools and hospitals, and settle down. Once you reach this stage in life, you start planning far ahead into the future.

At this stage, it is ok to buy furniture as you are planning to use it for more than 2 years or so. Many settled families use a very sturdy and good quality furniture for more than a decade. I remember the double bed I used to sleep on when I was in high school. That double bed is still there in my parents’ house, which I fondly use when visiting them.

Reason 2: You want more choices, and high quality

There is dearth of choices while renting furniture. Maybe 6–7 types of beds, or sofa. But once you enter the shopping world, the choices are endless. The rental furniture market is more geared towards budget mindset folks. Hence, high quality, high priced furniture are not available on rental platforms.

If you want a solid Sheesham wood, with traditional Rajasthani carvings, then you will have to go the buy route. It is ok to find a good looking masterpiece furniture for your living abode. As long as you know you will be using it for a long time, and its not an impulsive purchase, its good.

Reason 3: You want customisation

You may want to customise the furniture. Maybe the space in your apartment is not a direct fit for the furniture available on rent. You want a certain type of finishing, or more storage space, or a different type of almirah knob.

Customisations are not available in rental furniture. You will have to go the buy route here. Customisations can be costlier, but worth it if you are thinking long term.

Reason 4: Your furniture is not available on rental

This is easy. What you want is not available on rent. The rental platforms are still maturing. They keep furniture items which are in high demand (fast moving). These platforms won’t probably keep a furniture which they can’t rent out fast or long enough.

There are several such examples. If you want a double bed with storage, you might struggle finding a rental option. For me, I wanted a single door waadrobe with mirror and storage space — couldn’t find one. Then I wanted a study table which can also act as a book case (side drawers), again couldn’t find one.

In case you can’t find a furniture you need, and need this furniture for a short time (<1 year), trying looking to buy a second hand furniture which are usually cheaper.

Parting Thoughts

Furnitures make our apartments lively, comfy, and efficient. Rent, buy, and re-sell them wisely, as you plan your future. Investing too little or too much is not ideal. I usually invest into furnitures within my means, and rent whenever my time horizon is less than 2 years.

In this generation of frequent job changes, layoffs, and uncertainty of working in same location for same company for long, rental furniture platforms have found a place to exist and grow.

Have you rented furniture before? What was your experience like? Do share in comments below.