Asking for advise from those financial savvy folks on here. My kid wants to apply several schools that require CSS for institutional aid. I have two questions : 1) Will we report gross income or AGI? The difference in our situation is considerable because of pension contributions. 2) What’s best source to get the real estate market value for family’s home equity and a rental property. I’ve received mixed advice: Zillow & Realtor.com have my home value inflated, this house has original baths and kitchen and no renovations. The FAFSA will ask for the rental property for sure, but the CSS schools will ask for both home and rental? I want to be ready to appeal if necessary but I’ve received different sources of where to get good property values: zillow, county tax assessment (lowest value), professional appraisals, recent sales in the area for similar home? I want to be prepared and be able to run the NCP with some good figures before deciding to apply to these schools.
I think FAFSA was asking AGI. For house value we used official state tax assessment.
CSS will ask you absolutely everything. It is terribly invasive. They will get your pension money too.
Thank you. I have the official tax assessments for both.
The CSS has you put in AGI, but then also has you list a bunch of things that are pre-tax deductions. They don’t have you list all of those pre-tax deductions from the W2 box but they ask for specific ones, though, and I believe certain pensions they want to see, but others they don’t. Your best bet is probably just to start a “test“ form and see what they include and what they don’t include.
Here is a screenshot. I grabbed from a super long, boring, detailed walk-through of the CSS for this year.
For real estate values, pretty much every school we looked into did not give us any indication of what value to use. The one school that did specify said that they use the Zillow estimated value, and that they would not take any deviation from that. I feel you as far as the value being inflated over what you could actually get! According to Zillow, our house is worth twice what we paid for it eight years ago, but there is zero chance we could get that because I have a couple of kids with special-needs who have seriously depreciated the house & and our pool is no longer functional either and will take many tens of thousand dollars to repair. 
Word of caution. CSS schools have huge variety what they consider “affordable”. Our biggest nightmares were Richmond and Rochester. Number were absolutely wild given 3 kids in colleges.
Why is it invasive? Why should a college give away a donor’s money to someone with a modest income who is living in the $2 million home (fully paid off) grandma bought them as a wedding present, while augmenting their income with the 12 apartment investment property they inherited from grandpa?
I know people who are W2 “poor” but live like members of the 1%-- which in fact, they are. Picasso hanging on the wall of the dining room, kids benefit from every advantage of wealth (the ski trips, the sailing clubs, the pricey EC’s-- all paid for by loving grandparents and the “greats”). It’s not intrusive for a college to determine who has “outside resources”, i.e. pricey real estate purchased for them by someone else, vs. a family struggling to get by on that same W2 income.
Well, I do not have 2 million paid house or grandma with any money. But Richmond and Rochester thought that we can pay simultaneously $60K for one kid, $50k for another and $30k for third. Show me true middle class family (we are not doctors or lawyers) who can do it.
BTW we do not have any stocks or another property. Only normal 401k.
CSS feels a little invasive because it’s like going to a financial therapist. They ask every question. There is no hiding.
I do not have a million dollar home, it’s very modest and we have very little equity on it. The investment property is practically under water. So, for our family, it really makes a difference what we enter as a fair market value report.
I appreciate your detailed reply. TY
Just aplly to variety of schools and do not expect anything.
We also had fun time with Dickinson. When we demonstrated that their offer lacked really check they gave us… additional Dickinson loan (on top of other loans).
So make sure that you have on the list affordable schools.
An acquaintance sold her “almost underwater” investment property, put the small proceeds into paying down the mortgage on her primary home, said that it made her cash flow a little easier and reduced the complexity of their CSS and she thinks got them more aid.
You’d need to run the numbers for your own situation…
Since neither FAFSA nor CSS directly address what source to use to value properties, I would choose the source that gives you the lowest defensible number. Some schools might choose something else, but you can’t control that. What do you think @kelsmom?
If I report the county or state tax assessment value which looks lower than a Zillow, would I expect to be selected for verification or questioned about that? is that how it works? (BTW, our home is a modest house and investment property is a small unit which we’ll breakeven on if sold)
There is no set answer. Some schools that have good institutional aid may request a specific way to determine value - that is their prerogative. For FAFSA, you can use any method that makes sense. In my state, the state equalized value for tax purposes is supposed to be 1/2 the market value. It often is less than what Zillow indicates. I would use the SEV in my case.
I was told by one financial aid office that we could use whatever source we thought was reasonable, and that they would run their own numbers when they did the financial aid package. 
Like MWfan commented, you can’t control what they are going to use if they’re going to use specific source, so you might as well just use something that you have a reasonable justification for.
I do not think so… School will not send to your home appraiser. County assessment is a legal document. Zillow is a marketing website.
A Profile school that really looks into value could question it, but you will not be selected for verification by the FAFSA processor based on reported asset value.
Thanks
Some of us have home equity because we bought when the market was down and have watched property values rise around us while our property taxes and insurance payments go up (and we certainly still have mortgage payments). We would never be able to afford our house today. Not even close.
As to the original question; we appealed our assessment a couple of years ago and got it adjusted; we use the adjusted value on the Profile since we have actual court paperwork that says it’s the correct value. We also had an appraisal done when we got a home equity LOC a couple of years ago that lists a similar (a little lower, IIRC) value.