Tracking Primary Residences

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at gmail.com
Mon Jun 19 11:28:19 EDT 2017


Leo,

Make the Unrealized Gain account a sub-account of Equity, not Income. Realized gains are income, unrealized gains (since they aren’t real yet) are not.

I think the traditional account is: Equity:Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income. (But “Equity:Unrealized Gains” is much shorter) You can have sub-accounts under that to track the alleged gains on individual assets.

That will put it on your Balance Sheet where you want to see ‘possible current net worth’ but not mess with your actual Income - Expenses calculation.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Jun 18, 2017, at 4:43 PM, Leo Bolta <lbolta at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> Although I understand it does not seem to be standard accounting practice to
> track appreciation on a condo which is a principal residence, I can't help
> but want to implement incorporating very conservative periodic values into
> GnuCash, possibly as much as twice a year as the condo represents a
> considerable percentage of my net worth/portfolio. 
> 
> My attempt at treating the condo as a fixed asset with an unrealized capital
> gain aspect was to incorporate the set-up as per 'Example 11.3 of Chapter
> 11" in the GnuCash manual. However because of a quite a hot
> real-estate/condo market, my unrealized gains are now so significant that
> the unrealized gain dwarfs the fixed income amounts to the point that the
> bar charts such as "Income/Expense Chart" displays a skyscraper sized income
> bar in the graph, next to a very miniscule bungalow sized bar representing
> my expenses. Prior to implementing the new set-up, the Income vs. Expense
> chart was much more meaningful as a gage to monitor tangible income against
> real expenses. I've even tried taking the total bi-annual gain and evenly
> distributing the total into the past six months but the reports still don't
> have the meaningful representation it once had for me. 
> 
> Because the condo is my principal residence which I don't have any intention
> of selling anytime soon, is there a way to account for periodic appreciated
> values, without it effecting income in such a profound way when the gains
> are in reality mere paper gains? I am also not so concerned about the
> eventual capital gain, since the sale of a primary residence are not treated
> as a taxable gain here in Canada. 
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