Should I include my house as an asset?
I sold my home last year and the money was deposited into a money market account while I got established in a new state. Oi! already problems! It looks like I just invented a bunch of new money.
Okay, fast forward to last month. I wrote a check for partial payment for new house. Now what?
I would like to include the value of the house in my net worth.😁
Best Answers
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@Dbaker450 - You can create categories that would easily and clearly fit what you want. It depends on how detailed you want or need to be. I think for the house(s) you sold, for the starting and ending values - you would want include the appropriate expenses for each situation such as closing costs, appraisal fees, commission, and related expenses. If you have interim MV changes (appreciation), you can add those, but ultimately you would want to end up with the value when the house was sold. Then you can add the appropriate expenses to equal the actual cash amount you recieved for the house sale. Recreating a home asset value for historical purposes can be more of an art than science.
For your current house, the starting value would be cash paid, amount of loans taken, and any expenses related to the purchase of the house. After that the value can be periodically updated to reflect the current MV of the house. If you have a mortgage, that can be linked to the house value account so to properly calculate equity.
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at this stage, they are not physical assets that you own, but are financial assets (cash). so unless you are trying to recreate historical transactions, I don't see the value of adding assets that you no longer own. The results of selling those houses are now in your money market as cash. You can / could use a memo desription if you are wanting to show the source.
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Answers
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It is quite easy to set up your house as an asset in Quicken. Just add a new account using the "Other Assets and Liabilities" tab. You will see "Property" as an option. The account setup will take you through the necessary steps to create the "House Value" asset account. You can also connect your mortgage to the account to properly track equity. And depending on what version of Quicken you have, you can also use Zillow to periodically update the MV in Quicken.
If you search "HELP", you can find more detailed information.
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When you deposited the sale money what category did you use if you didn't have a House Account? I would probably use the same account name like MoneyMarket as the category so it is a one sided entry like [MoneyMarket] since you didn't have the house listed as an Asset. Or it should be a split transaction so the net profit (not proceeds) goes to an income category.
I'm staying on Quicken 2013 Premier for Windows.
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Thanks QWin and volvogirl!
I;m trying to open asset accounts for two houses that I have bought, lived in and sold. Do you think I can figure this out? Maybe use categories Closing expenses and Appreciation? I am retired and trying to put my nestegg into understandable assets.
Thanks for your input.
Db
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@Dbaker450 - You can create categories that would easily and clearly fit what you want. It depends on how detailed you want or need to be. I think for the house(s) you sold, for the starting and ending values - you would want include the appropriate expenses for each situation such as closing costs, appraisal fees, commission, and related expenses. If you have interim MV changes (appreciation), you can add those, but ultimately you would want to end up with the value when the house was sold. Then you can add the appropriate expenses to equal the actual cash amount you recieved for the house sale. Recreating a home asset value for historical purposes can be more of an art than science.
For your current house, the starting value would be cash paid, amount of loans taken, and any expenses related to the purchase of the house. After that the value can be periodically updated to reflect the current MV of the house. If you have a mortgage, that can be linked to the house value account so to properly calculate equity.
0 -
at this stage, they are not physical assets that you own, but are financial assets (cash). so unless you are trying to recreate historical transactions, I don't see the value of adding assets that you no longer own. The results of selling those houses are now in your money market as cash. You can / could use a memo desription if you are wanting to show the source.
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