How to record real estate investment and distribution transactions?

hbwilliams22

I make real estate investments out of a Brokerage account. Over time, the firm pays me distributions that include Return of Capital and Profit transactions. For example: I invest -$100,000 into the firm. On a monthly basis, they send me $10,000 which includes $8,000 of Return of Capital and $2,000 in Profit. In order to record this properly, do I need to create a Custom Brokerage or Asset account that I transfer the transactions to? I am trying to do this in the simplest way possible.

Jon

I guess the way I would do that would be to create a custom Security for each real estate investment. Following your example, in your brokerage account you would purchase 100,000 shares of that security at $1 per share. When you get the distribution, sell 8,000 shares for $1 per share (return of capital) and add a second transaction which would be a $2K capital gains distribution.

I don't think I would create a separate account for each real estate investment, I don't see how that would be useful.