ROI Calculator

Absolute return is what people boast about, CAGR is what they earned

Every property conversation at a wedding runs the same way. Someone bought a flat in Wakad or Whitefield for ₹40 lakh, sold it for ₹60 lakh, and says “50 percent return”. It is true. It is also nearly useless, because it has no year in it.

This calculator takes three inputs and returns both numbers:

• Amount invested. What went in, all of it, on day one.
• Value now, or sale price. What came out, or what it would fetch today.
• Held for. Years, with quarters allowed. Two years and three months is 2.25.

absolute return = (final − initial) / initial × 100
CAGR            = ((final / initial)^(1 / years) − 1) × 100

Absolute return is the wedding number. CAGR, the compound annual growth rate, is the steady rate at which the money would have had to grow every single year to get from the first figure to the second. It is the only one of the two that can be compared with an FD rate, a PPF rate or another investment held for a different length of time. The calculator also shows the profit in rupees, the multiple of your money, and how many years it would take to double at that rate, which is the fastest way to feel what a percentage means.

A ₹40 lakh flat sold for ₹60 lakh after eight years

The defaults:

absolute = (60,00,000 − 40,00,000) / 40,00,000 × 100 = 50%

CAGR     = ((60,00,000 / 40,00,000)^(1/8) − 1) × 100
         = (1.5^0.125 − 1) × 100
         = (1.051990 − 1) × 100
         = 5.20%

Absolute return	50.00%
Annualised (CAGR)	5.20%
Profit	₹20,00,000.00
Multiple of your money	1.50
Doubles every (years)	13.7

Fifty percent became 5.20 percent a year. That is below what a bank FD paid for most of those eight years. Put the same ₹40 lakh into a 7 percent FD compounded quarterly and the FD calculator gives ₹69,68,853.97 at the end of eight years before tax, nearly ₹10 lakh more than the flat fetched, with no tenant, no society dispute and no broker.

The FD is taxable every year, so the fair comparison for someone in the 30 percent slab is 4.9 percent after tax: ₹40 lakh grows to ₹59,05,669.32. The flat and the FD land within a lakh of each other, and the flat has not paid its own taxes yet.

What the flat really cost

The 5.20 percent is already optimistic because ₹40 lakh was the agreement value, not what left the bank account. Stamp duty and registration in Maharashtra run at about 6 percent plus 1 percent (Karnataka is a little lower, Delhi charges women less; it varies by state and check yours), so ₹2.8 lakh on a ₹40 lakh purchase. The buying broker took 1 percent, another ₹40,000. Call the real cost ₹43.2 lakh.

On the way out the selling broker took 1 percent of ₹60 lakh. Net proceeds ₹59.4 lakh.

initial = 43,20,000
final   = 59,40,000
CAGR    = 4.06%

Then tax. For a property sold after 23 July 2024 the long-term capital gains rate is 12.5 percent without indexation, with an option to use the old 20 percent with indexation if the property was bought before that date and the older method comes out lower. Taking the simple case, 12.5 percent of the ₹16.2 lakh gain is ₹2,02,500, and the after-tax proceeds are ₹57,37,500:

	Absolute	CAGR	Doubles in
Agreement values only	50.00%	5.20%	13.7 years
After stamp duty and brokerage	37.50%	4.06%	17.4 years
After 12.5% LTCG as well	32.81%	3.61%	19.5 years

Rent, if the flat was let, goes on the other side of the ledger and can rescue the number; maintenance, property tax, the two months it sat empty between tenants and the ₹1.5 lakh of repainting before sale go against it. This tool cannot take a monthly stream, so total the net rent over the eight years and add it to the final value before you run it. Section 54 can defer the LTCG if the proceeds go into another house within the time limits; that changes the tax, not the return.

Equity has its own costs, smaller but real: STT of 0.1 percent on delivery buys and sells, brokerage, and for FY 2025-26 LTCG at 12.5 percent on gains above ₹1.25 lakh in the year for listed shares and equity funds, 20 percent short-term if sold within a year. Subtract them the same way; the P&L report on Zerodha or Groww lists them.

Doubled in ten years is 7.2 percent a year

The other wedding number is “doubled”. A stock that doubled, a fund that doubled, a plot that doubled. Doubling is a multiple of 2 and an absolute return of 100 percent, and on its own it means nothing until you divide by the years.

Doubled in	CAGR
3 years	25.99%
5 years	14.87%
10 years	7.18%

Ten years to double is 7.18 percent, an FD rate. The rule of 72 gets you there in your head: divide 72 by the rate for the doubling time, or by the doubling time for the rate. 72 ÷ 10 is 7.2. 72 ÷ 5.2 is 13.8, against the 13.7 years the calculator prints for the flat.

The trap runs the other way as well. A stock tip that took ₹10,000 to ₹80,000 in three years is a 700 percent absolute return and a 100 percent CAGR. Nobody sustains that; the ones who did in 2020 and 2021 mostly gave it back. When a return is far above anything an index has ever done over a long stretch, treat the number as a description of the risk taken, not of skill.

Returns this tool cannot measure, and which one to open instead

CAGR assumes one sum went in on day one and one sum came out at the end. The moment there is money going in or out along the way, it is the wrong measure.

A SIP. Twelve instalments a year, each with a different holding period; the one from last month has barely had time to move. The correct figure is XIRR, which every fund statement, Groww and Zerodha Coin print. Running the total invested against the current value here will understate a good SIP badly, because it pretends the last instalment had as long to grow as the first. Use the SIP calculator to plan, XIRR to judge.

A flat bought on a home loan. You did not put ₹40 lakh in; you put ₹8 lakh down and the bank put the rest, and you paid interest for eight years. The return on your ₹8 lakh is a different, leveraged number, and the interest paid is a cost the home loan calculator will total for you. On a 20-year loan at 8.5 percent the interest over the first eight years is typically more than the principal repaid, which is why “the rent covered the EMI” and “the flat made money” are not the same claim.

A deposit or SIP planned forwards. If the question is what a known rate turns a sum into, that is the compound interest calculator, running this formula in the other direction.

Anything held under a year. The calculator will happily annualise a six-month gain: ₹1 lakh to ₹1.5 lakh in half a year prints as 125 percent CAGR. Arithmetically correct, practically meaningless, since the second half of the year has not happened. For short holds report the absolute return and say the period out loud.

One last input people get wrong: the years. Bought in March 2018, sold in September 2026 is 8.5 years, not 8, and on this example that is the difference between 5.20 and 4.89 percent. The date difference calculator will give the exact figure from the two registration dates.