Tracking Primary Residences

Leo Bolta lbolta at rogers.com
Sun Jun 25 14:18:29 EDT 2017


My sincere apologies if there were duplicates of this email previously sent.
I was having some problems getting back onto the list after delisting a few
months ago.  My test that I was actually back on board, was to also receive
a copy in my email in-box.  The email sent this morning to the list, was the
first in which I actually got a copy back, which indicated to me that this
attempt was finally successful.

Why to track a primary residence may not make sense to an accountant but
everyone's situation may be different.  For example, one may live in a peak
demand area and it may one day prove to be a timely decision to moving into
less popular area, where prices are not so hyped and geared more towards a
lifestyle that one may prefer.  I acknowledged in my email, that it was not
a standard practice to track primary residence, but I don't necessarily
follow standards and was hoping to get a reply from someone who may have
thought a similar situation through.

Leo          

-----Original Message-----
From: David T. [mailto:sunfish62 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: June-25-17 11:40 AM
To: lbolta at rogers.com
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: Tracking Primary Residences

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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