No. of Recommendations: 6
As others have pointed out, homeownership comes with it a lot of associated expenses (property taxes, upkeep & maintenance costs, insurance, on and on). Yes we derive psychic income from it from many happy memories. But from an investment point of view it is a negative cashflow yielding asset so from a DCF calculation, it is worth a negative present value.
On the other hand it has utility value to others, so it is worth something just like a Monet painting. I think one's investable assets (thus excluding home equity) matters more at least in the long run. If I were producing one of these reports, I would look at both: overall net worth including home equity & net worth without.
