Existing home and mortgage

[Michael Wagner]

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