Metric for Net Worth Minus Cost to Liquidate?

Question

Is there a metric that is someone's net worth minus the cost to liquidate their assets?

Suppose I have a rental house valued at $300,000 with no mortgage. If I liquidate this asset, there would be transactions costs including a realtor commission and potentially a capital gains tax. To a reasonable extent, these costs are known (6% for realtor, 15% for the gains tax).

It seems odd to me that net worth doesn't factor these types of costs in, especially with investments. Regardless, does anyone track a "liquid cash" value like this?

Answer 1

I do this for taxes, and keep track of the after-tax value of my investment accounts. This is especially helpful for determining an accurate asset allocation for rebalancing.

For Roth accounts it is easy as there is nothing to do. :)

For pre-tax accounts like my 401(k), I've estimated my retirement tax rate as 25% rate. It is just a guess, but it is better than doing nothing.

For my regular brokerage account, I assume that my long term capital gains rate will be 15% when I'll need to sell the stocks. This makes my spreadsheet more complicated because I need to track the capital gains as well as the current value.

I don't do this for my house since I have no plans to sell any time soon and the house will hopefully appreciate a lot and there are just too many unknowns to make any kind of accurate future estimate. Though for a rental property that you may sell soon, you should be able to come up with a good estimate of your return post sale.