<p>I read an article in the WSJ today and the recommendation was to list your home's value at 80% of its appraised value for a "quick sale" price. This actually makes sense to me in light of the fact that our home is old and in great need of repair and we certainly would have to put in many thousands into it in order to sell it.</p>
<p>Is it worth sending an updated CSS Profile to colleges reflecting the change?</p>
<p>For the record, our house is 54 years old, 1152 sq. feet, was purchased at 147.5K 18 years ago, we owe 169K and its current appraisal is 300K (we live in So. Cal). Prices go up and down but the market is currently on a downturn here and certainly, we would have to do some work on it (like we have no working heater and would need to have a new one installed and we have water damage in both bathrooms).</p>
<p>Thank-you.</p>
<p>You are supposed to use the market value, which is not necessarily the same as the “appraised” value if you are talking about a tax appraisal.</p>
<p>Lopping 20% off the top of the market value doesn’t seem reasonable to me, since the market value should take into consideration the condition of the property, and that big of a discount should not be required.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that the CSS Profile criteria is for a “quick sale” anyway. I know the Profile says something like “should use the price they could reasonably expect to receive for their home if it were sold today”, and some people interpret that to mean, if I decide to sell my house while I am eating breakfast this morning, what price would I get if I had to sell it by dinner time, but I don’t think this is a rational interpretation.</p>
<p>No matter what method you use, as long as you can pass the “sniff” test, I think you will be ok. If they look you up on Zillow or some similar site and your value is half of what is reported, it will raise a flag.</p>
<p>You might want to look up the Federal Housing Index multiplier and see what that gives you.</p>
<p>There wasn’t enough data for Zillow to have a zestimate for our house. We asked the real estate agent who sold us the house to come in and do a quick market analysis. She was happy to do this even though we were clear that we were not planning on actually selling the house at this time. I told her that I wanted her to suggest a listing price that would be likely to get the house to move fairly quickly (not fire sale quick or anything, but not sitting for ages either). She sent me a letter suggesting a price she felt would “be competitive and generate some early activity and hopefully and offer” which I filed with my financial aid paperwork.</p>
<p>you have no working heater in the winter?
How warm is Southern Ca anyway?
( I’m there) ;)</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4,</p>
<p>Very warm compared to the rest of the country! LOL We just bought a $25 electric heater off of Amazon to get us through the winter, which usually goes through April. Our little house has insulation and we put towels by doors and windows to keep the cold from getting in; 1150 square feet isn’t too much to heat. Our heater broke and no one would repair it because it has asbestos in one part of it, so we would need to replace it (wall heater). </p>
<p>Mathmomvt, so was the price you put on the forms lower than the appraised value? I don’t want to be dishonest but if the purpose is to have parents use equity, I’d want to be realistic about what equity we truly have knowing full well we would still have work to do to sell it and we wouldn’t get the appraised price.</p>
<p>If you mean the property tax appraised value, I think the market value we put down was <em>higher</em> than the property tax appraisal. Around here, those numbers bear no relationship to real market values – they only need to be accurate to other homes in the same town so that everyone pays a fair share of taxes, so it’s more like a “ranking” than a real valuation. </p>
<p>If you’ve had a true professional appraisal of your home, such as you would have done before refinancing your mortgage or taking out a home equity loan, that should take into account any deficiencies in your house that you would have to correct in order to sell it. I don’t think taking 20% off the appraised value of the home makes sense in that case. If you are going to use the equity in your home to finance college, most likely you’re not going to do that by selling your home, but by refinancing or taking out a loan against your equity, in which case the appraised value would determine how much you could borrow.</p>
<p>And even if you were selling it, would you really need to either put $60K into it or discount the selling price by that much?</p>
<p>Oh no, not the property value; I think that’s something like 180K. No, I don’t think we would need to put 60K into the house. It’s hard to know until we sell what will be breaking down at that time. 
Really, we just do damage control. Last year, we finally had to get a new roof when it began leaking into our bedroom. And just got the toilets fixed that were leaking last month. It’s fun trying to keep up. And did I say I am <em>sooo</em> grateful to have a roof over my head?? Don’t mean to sound whiny at all.</p>
<p>So an appraisal takes into account what needs fixing? So, you’re saying if we get certain things fixed that an appraiser sees as broken/old, etc. we would get/ask for more than the appraised price?</p>
<p>Thanks for helping me understand.</p>
<p>My understanding was to use the federal calculator formula where you enter purchase price, year and state and it calculates appreciation estimate. I then deducted conservative estimate of roof and bathroom work that would need to be done to sell at any price (and possibly even refinance). I also used Zillow and looked online at Remax estimates. I triangulated and got a good midway estimate which a bit over 90% of federal estimate.</p>
<p>I think ultimately you can use any value that you can reasonably defend. Keep records/printouts from any websites whose estimates you use to come up with a number to put in.</p>