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If you're planning to stay in St. Louis, Missouri for more than three years, it's worth it to buy.
In a lot of big cities, buying a home only makes financial sense if you're staying put for a while. In New York City, where the housing market is notoriously competitive, it may not be worth your money to buy a home unless you live there for 18 years.
That's according to a recent SmartAsset report, which calculated the "breakeven point" - the point at which the total costs of renting become greater than the total costs of buying - for 29 major cities.
Everyone's situation is different, and there is no universal answer to the rent versus buy question. In this analysis, the cities with the shortest time to break even are the best places to buy.
Here, we rounded up the 10 cities with the shortest breakeven points. We also included the average monthly mortgage payment, monthly rent, and home price, from SmartAsset's report: