Many people do (or do not) know that schools that use the CSS Profile/Institutional Methodology to calculate estimated family contribution (EFC). However, these schools do not treat it equally. Some count 100% of your available home equity and some limit it to a percentage of your income. You can find a good discussion of this, and a link to a spreadsheet that breaks this down school by school, at http://www.thecollegesolution.com/will-your-home-equity-hurt-financial-aid-chances/ .
Also, these schools may or may not tell you how they came up with your EFC unless you ask them very specific questions. We found out, by asking a direct question arising from a seemingly innocuous side note from D2’s school, that they overstated the value of our home by 41%, costing us $2K in aid. As a result, this aid has been added as of last week.
The reason this happened is that the school used the College Board Home value calculator which does not take into consideration specific local real estate market conditions. This calculator does not seem to be publicly available, but you can try the calculator at http://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Tools/pages/hpi-calculator.aspx . If you know your value is less than what this calculator says, provide documentation to the school in separate correspondence. Do NOT rely on the field on the CSS form that allows you to provide additional information. It seems that the data in this field does not get sent to the schools or they ignore it.
Hope this is helpful for you all.