An offshoot to this question, how do they verify home equity? I know the CSS Profile for some schools considers home equity. But how do they know what your loan balance and home value are? Not sure if loan balance is in tax return (itemized supplements) but no way for them to know your particular home value without an appraisal (which isn’t part of the process).
This is serious as some of these schools require you to use a lot of that HE prior to providing aid.