Tracking Primary Residences

[David T.]

Leo,

First, I don’t understand why you sent your email verbatim again to the list.

Next, it seems to me that if you didn’t track the unrealized gains on your condo (which are not actually real, BTW), then you wouldn’t have a problem with the graphing of the non-existent gains. 

While it may feel good to imagine how much wealth is accruing to your investment, the reality is that none of it counts until you have a buyer who has paid you for the asset. SInce you claim to want to be staying in your house—and that you don’t care about the eventual capital gain, then why track it at all?

David

> On Jun 25, 2017, at 7:13 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 previous 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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