Home(s) should be included as investments and part of Asset Allocation

Home's (or Equity in a home) should be allowed as investments. In addition, Asset Allocation should include "Real Estate" as many people consider Real Estate (including REIT's) as part of their investment portfolio.
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  • Tom Young
    Tom Young SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    The newest update to Quicken now allows for customized asset classes, so if you're using the latest version you can do this all on your own.
    Create a dummy manual brokerage Account and create a dummy security called "Home" or whatever, with a "Real Estate" asset class.  Then do an ADD action of one share of Home with an acquisition date and cost basis that's appropriate and you've got your wish!  You could change the "quote" for Home from time to time, as you see fit.
    If you've already got an asset Account for your home you'd want to delete that Account to avoid double counting for net worth reporting.
    You could even do the same thing with a security called "Equity in home" instead, though that would then also require the that both your home and mortgage Account would need to be deleted.
    If you really want to keep a current Home and Mortgage Account on your books you could finesse the "net worth" issue by creating a custom report that either excludes your dummy brokerage Account or excludes the Home and Mortgage Account, depending on how you set this all up.
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    You can change the Display intent of a house account to Investment, and it will be grouped with your investment accounts and included in the Allocations tab.

    But it will be included as "Cash".  Allocation is done by the "security type not the account type, and a house account has no security associated with it.
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  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    If you put your house in an investment account and created a security for it, you could use the new feature in R30.9 to create a new security type and then separate it off.  But of course that has other ramifications like not being able to associate a loan with it or use Zillow estimate.
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  • Joseph Arden
    Joseph Arden Member ✭✭✭
    I did change the display intent of the home to 'Investment' and saw that Allocation treats it as 'Cash'. However, Allocation is done by 'Asset Class' not "Security Type". So it would be helpful if there was an option to select the Asset Class for the Home (e.g., a custom Asset Class = "Real Estate"). In addition, it would be helpful if Quicken just used the equity in the home, not the home value. So it would need to offset the home value with any mortgages. This could be done by allowing loans to be defined as Investments (negative investments) with an 'Asset Class'; similar to what we are describing with assets.

    So the new change allowing user to create Asset Classes is great and being able to assign an asset as an investment is also helpful. However, having the ability to assign the asset (or loan) investment to an Asset Class seems to be the missing piece. Sounds like a simple but worthwhile enhancement. Right?
  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Don't forget to vote for your own idea by clicking the up arrow under the vote count in the big blue box in the first post.

    Note that many people choose not to include the value of their home in their investment asset allocation, because it is not liquid, you can't easily sell a portion of it, etc.

    Quicken does of course include the home equity in your Net Worth.
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  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    Just to clarify I was simply stating that the way they determine the asset class is by the security, and as such even though it sounds easy to say "make x account this asset type" it seems to me that there isn't anything in place to even start to do that.

    They would have to create a whole new setting/system for that kind of thing.

    Yes it would be useful, but "not easy".
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  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    A more general request that would fit well with the new expanded list of asset classes would be to allow users to specify an asset class for Asset type accounts. Probably there is no need to allow an asset mixture.

    Then it could be used for other assets like precious metals, art, or whatever.

    The asset class should also apply to any linked loan.
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