Tracking Primary Residences

[David T.]

Leo,

I am sorry you were having trouble getting messages to the list. I am glad you got that straightened out.

As to the point of tracking the value of your house, I’ll begin by saying I am not an accountant. However, I *have* been through the precise situation you describe, and I found out through experience the pointlessness of counting the value of my primary residence until it came time to sell that house. All of the interim values I entered as unrealized gains had no relation to the amount of money we ultimately received. The lesson I learned was that all that effort served only to make me feel worried/eager about how much value my house had lost/gained—with no actual effect on the final selling amount (which was neither as much nor as little as I had figured). 

This, coupled with the fact that you were asking how to prevent these numbers from skewing your reports, led me to suggest that you not track them in GnuCash. I see from your other reply that you’ve chosen that path anyhow.

Best,
David

> On Jun 25, 2017, at 11:18 PM, Leo Bolta <lbolta at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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