Thanks for the feedback, Reiser…I’ve known for awhile that the way I was capturing appreciation/depreciation wasn’t quite right (one of the things I had in mind on the simplifying assumption comment). I’ve been struggling with a way to characterize that correctly. You’ve given me a few ideas on how to mull that one.
I think the 0% gain assumption effectively assumes housing appreciation=inflaction. Anything more is gain. I might think about taking that number and discounting it back to present value over 5-7 years using the interest rate on the mortgage…far from perfect, but that would mute the impact some, which I agree needs to be done given the cash flow considerations.
No time to mess with it right now (spreadsheets to work on for my real job:), but I’ll have to take a stab…that sheet has been a continual work in progress, but it’s really helped me to think about things.
