Existing home and mortgage

[David Carlson]

On 3/28/2015 10:54 PM, Michael Wagner wrote:
> I have read the section on loans in the concepts manual, and I am want
> to make sure that I understand how enter records for my current home,
> which I have owned for about 10 years.
>
> My goal in using gnucash is really to help me understand expenses - I
> am not concerned with taxable matters in any detail (if that makes
> difference), and I am quite happy to manually enter each mortgage
> payment principle/interest payment as they occur (ie, I don't need
> gnucash to do those calculations).
>
> I have set up a "Libilities:Home Mortgage" account and an "Expenses:
> Mortgage Interest" account.
>
> I need some way to track the value of the home as an asset.
>
> It seems like I need to create a "Assets:Hard Assets:Home" account to
> add the house as an asset.
>
> 1) Do I create the Home account with an opening balance of the value
> of what I paid for the home 10 years ago, and then add an "Unrealized
> Capital Gains" transaction that takes the value of the home to
> whatever Zillow say it was worth on January 1st (the starting date for
> all my other accounts)? Then I think that I would update the home
> value whenever I feel like it by adjusting the value to whatever
> Zillow says  its worth with unrealized Capital Gains and losses
> whenever I fee like it?
>
> 2) Do I just create the Home account with whatever Zillow says the
> home was worth on January 1st?
>
> Mike
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Just to make things more interesting, I think that it is making a huge
presumption to accept what Zillow says your house is worth.  I would
take the more conservative approach of basically carrying your house at
cost, possibly with a sub-account for cost-basis adjustments that are
tax worthy like adding a swimming pool.  If you want to track 'Market
Value", I would separate that somehow so it can be filtered out when
needed for tax purposes. 
In Illinois our real estate taxes are partly based on what a local tax
assessor says that our property is worth, which is another can of
worms(don't get me started on that one, it can make or break politicians
careers).

David C