Paid Deposit

I delivered the 5% deposit check for the house to the lawyer this morning and she expects the deal will be locked in today or Monday. Then we sign the mortgage loan documents at the bank and the countdown to "settlement" starts. I had been planning to do a proper economic accounting for the house, but it is getting very complicated and I think I might take a really simple option instead. This would treat principal payments like today's deposit and the capital component of mortgage payments as saving and everything else as just consumption spending. And I won't try to compute a rate of return for this asset. Any gain in value above the amount saved into the asset will be a gain in net worth but won't be included in reports on our investment performance.