namooangel

how do colleges confirm home equity and home value?
how does the government do so as well?

do i go to a home value website and subtract our mortgage to get our home equity? or do we have to get actual numbers from the bank? (home appraisals)

my parents have rental property, and the renters definitely don't care of it very well. do we take this into consideration as well?

thanks so much

emeraldkity4

you probably have numbers of what your homes are assesed at for tax purposes
Subtract the amount of the mortgages and you will have the equity.
roughly
learn TMI about your neighbors!

calmom

Many colleges will use this calculation:
http://finaid.org/calculators/federalhousing.phtml
(My daughter's college uses that)

jerzgrlmom

When Profile asks what is the current value of your home (questionPA130), are we supposed to put the value given on the Federal Housing Index Indicator? We used the extra 10% number. But my DH did not subtract out mortgage/home equity amount from that - but some people seem to be saying to do that. I'm confused. Doesn't PROFILE do that calcualation for you? In question PA135, it asks "What do your parents owe on their home?"

sblake7

Value less mortgage equals equity. So when you report value of home, you shouldn't deduct mortgage debt. IF asked for equity in the home, you should deduct mortgage debt.

namooangel

Can we use the net assessed value of our house and the rental property?

My friend got accepted ed to columbia and she used the net assessed value when she did the profile. Consequently, she got a financial aid package of 30,000 in aid even though she has one house and two real estate properties with her family's income well over 150,000.

The thing is, our net assessed values are lower than what we bought the houses for because of the homeowners exemption of 7,000 (the profile asks how much we bought the houses for). Will colleges find this odd? And also, the net assessed value is definitely less than half of the the market value.

While the Fin Aid calculator that Calmom provided does provide low home value which helps with lower home equity, the net assessed value from our county is more favorable. Which one should I use?

How do colleges really check home values? My friend's family income is above ours with more real estate properties and in a way I don't want to pay more than she is for college.

dt123

I doubt anyone outside the FA office really knows, and the rate and method of checking is something the schools won't disclose. My guess is that the colleges don't check at all and just take the applicants' representations at face value. There might be the one in a thousand they decide to check at random, and it might be yours. Or there might be something "interesting" about your application, so somebody decides to check in a little more detail than usual.

Zillow would give ballpark real quick, unless you live in the boonies. My county's tax appraisals are available online, and I am not sure how common that is but we are not usually leading edge in anything. Plus there is that calculator thingie they can use that takes your purchase price and year and estimates a value.

The point is your valuation could be checked, and if it is you better have something to back up what you say it is worth, or your whole application might be jeopardized.

namooangel

so the county's tax appraisal is valid?

dt123

It would be where I live, because they are very accurate. Here in Texas there is no income tax, so the state, county and city makes its money with relatively hefty property taxes. So there is a pretty good infrastructure for keeping the valuations accurate.

Mine went up one year more than I thought it should, so I called and they gave me a list of 10 comparables in my area that showed they were right on target. If you live somewhere where the appraisals are way off and you know it, it might not be a good idea to use it.

MLEVINE07

What happens if you already took out an equity loan? There is no way our home's equity can be used now...if we were to sell the house, our profit wouldn't even pay off the loan, from what I know.

emeraldkity4

if you have already taken out an equity loan- then your equity has been reduced, and that would be reflected when you fill out the aid forms.