If housing costs press harder on your budget every year, you are not the exception; you are the norm. Nationally, 12.2 million older-adult households spend more for housing than is recommended: about one in four older homeowners, and millions of renters alongside them. Whether you have a room to share or are seeking a home to land in, this calculator shows you the economic advantage of home sharing. The companionship and connection that come with a good match are the added benefit.
Home sharing is open to everyone. There are no age or income requirements to participate. Most of the people who share homes through our platform are older adults, so this calculator speaks to their needs. The math works at any age.
Select your state from the drop-down menu; every figure updates to your state’s own published data.
More Ways to Make Staying in Your Home Affordable
Home sharing is one tool, and it stacks with many others. HomeShare Online keeps a page for every state listing the programs that make aging in place more economical: energy assistance, weatherization, home repair funds, property tax relief, insurance help, and more. Each entry is checked against the program’s own website and links straight to it. They are available to you whether or not you ever match through our platform. As a nonprofit, our goal is simple: people who know every kind of help available to them.
Sharing or Selling.The Honest Comparison.
Most older adults do not think of home sharing first. It surfaces as a last resort, usually after the advice every older homeowner eventually hears: sell the house. Our research in Before the Move shows what actually drives these moves: income and isolation, far more often than health care needs. Both have answers at home. When the decision lands, the paths on the table are to sell and down-size, sell and rent, or sell and move to a facility. This section shows what each one means, in your own numbers.
Sources & NotesOpen the fine printClose the fine printEvery figure on this page traces to a published source. The full methodology, sources, and notes are available by clicking Open the Fine Print.
Why these numbers
Your budget starts at the Elder Index. The budget sliders are preset to The Elder Economic Security Standard™ Index (Elder Index), developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston: the independent, state-by-state measure of what a one-person older-adult household actually needs for housing, food, health care, transportation, and the basics.
The room rent is a real benchmark. Defaults price a room as half the state’s two-bedroom Fair Market Rent, exactly how HUD prices shared housing (24 CFR 982.617). In Oregon that is $850 a month, and the City of Portland Home Sharing Pilot’s affordability cap of $200 a week including utilities and fees, about $870 a month, lands within 2 percent of it. Either way it is a starting point, not a rule: the two people in a match always set the rent.
Averages first, then you. Income starts at your state’s average Social Security retirement check, rent at your state’s one-bedroom Fair Market Rent. Every slider is yours to move.
Sources
Elder Index. 2025 values, one-person household, good health, by housing situation (renter, owner with mortgage, owner without), Gerontology Institute, University of Massachusetts Boston, elderindex.org, retrieved July 2026, used with attribution. The Elder Index is a trademark of UMass Boston.
Income and rents. Average Social Security retired-worker benefit by state, December 2024 (SSA Annual Statistical Supplement 2025, Table 5.J6). One-bedroom and two-bedroom Fair Market Rents from NLIHC Out of Reach 2025, compiled from HUD FMRs; room-rent defaults are half the two-bedroom figure, rounded to $25, per the shared-housing pro-ration described under Why these numbers (24 CFR 982.617; corroborating benchmark from the City of Portland Home Sharing Pilot, Portland Housing Bureau, 2026, terms verified against the city’s program page July 2026).
Property taxes, home values, care and living costs. Median real estate taxes and median home values by state, ACS 2024 1-Year (B25103, B25077). Typical condo and co-op values by state, Zillow Home Value Index, June 2026 (Zillow Research). In-home care hourly medians and assisted living monthly medians, CareScout (Genworth) Cost of Care Survey 2025 (DC not surveyed; national medians shown there). Grocery months use your own food slider, preset to the Elder Index food budget of about $328 a month; the USDA moderate-cost food plan for adults 71 and older runs about $330 to $364 a month (June 2026), corroborating that preset.
Notes
Selling comparison. Sale proceeds assume roughly 8 percent in selling costs on the state median home value. With a mortgage selected, proceeds also subtract a typical remaining balance at the ~39 percent median loan-to-value of older mortgaged homeowners (JCHS analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finances, 2016; dated, national). The down-sizing comparison uses your state’s own typical condo or co-op value from the Zillow Home Value Index (June 2026). That index is a typical value, not a median sale price, and it is a later reading than the ACS 2024 home value it is set against, so treat the difference between the two as an approximation. In some states the typical condo is worth more than the typical home, or more than the sale nets after selling costs, so the tile there will show that down-sizing costs more than selling brings in. The difference between the two is rounded to the nearest $1,000. The renting and assisted living comparisons hold today’s prices constant; rents and care costs typically rise each year, so proceeds run out sooner than these figures suggest. None of this accounts for capital gains or individual circumstances. It is an illustration to start a conversation, not financial advice; talk to someone you trust before any decision this size.
Benefits. Home sharing income can affect income-tested benefits (utility discounts, energy assistance, SNAP and others). This calculator does not model eligibility.
Care. Home sharing is not care, and the person you share a home with is not a caregiver. Comparisons to in-home support and assisted living describe costs, not substitutes.
Cite This Paper
HomeShare Online. (2026). The Value of a Match: Your Household Math. https://homeshareoregon.org/research/household-math/
About HomeShare Online
HomeShare Online publishes this paper as students of aging, housing, and community infrastructure. We operate one of many possible interventions in the missing middle. We believe the most useful contribution we can make to the larger field is to add a frame and a research agenda, rather than to argue for our particular role within it.
If you are working on related questions, we would like to hear from you. Email the executive director at executivedirector@homeshareoregon.org.