[GNC] how to put loan downpayments in budgets

[john]

I think you're conflating two separate things. Saving up for a down payment is not buying a house. There's no property value to account for. Heck, there's not even a property yet: You don't even start looking until you've saved enough for the down payment.

The house purchase is easy: Suppose you buy a 100,000 house with the typical 20% down. That's just DR Assets:Fixed:House 100,000, CR Assets:Current:Savings 20,000, CR Liabilities:Mortgage 80,000. 

Saving up that future down payment is just earmarking. The easy way is with a sub-account called "Down Payment" under whatever actual bank account holds the money, or maybe an actual separate account. Since it's usually a long-term goal it's worthwhile collecting enough to roll into a higher-interest (yeah, I know, but with inflation picking up interest on bank accounts will come back) account like a CD.

Regards,
John Ralls

> On Mar 29, 2022, at 6:33 PM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
> 
> Tough one.
> 
> The property value doesn't increase because you didn't borrow the full price and paid cash up front for a portion of it.
> 
> The liability doesn't change because that's after (net) the down-payment.
> 
> I'd hazard either an asset or equity account for something like 'savings goals' similar to the various approaches for envelope budgeting that have been discussed here before.
> 
> Regards,
> Adrien
> 
> On 3/29/22 8:07 PM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:
>> I would imagine the down payment would go into an asset account. I.e., transfer from Assets:Savings into Assets: HouseValue? A down payment doesn't go into the liability. It is still your asset...
> 
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