<p>After getting advice on here about some land we co-own with other family members, I have been calling around to various entities to verify how to handle them as an asset. The appraiser said she would not even list them as you have no control, the bank said they could only be an asset if the other owners gave written consent, the college said to list it for what we would sell it to the other owner for. I tried to check into the cost of a forced sale and that would pretty much take all the value of the property to do with courts/lawyers etc. </p>
<p>I am sure we are not the first to fill out the FAFSA and have co-owned property. It is inherited farmland. What have others done? I want to do this right, but in the end, that money is not available to us without consent of the other owners.</p>
<p>That doesn’t matter. You should take the total net value of the property and multiply it by your percentage ownership. If the property has a net worth of $100K and you are a 40% owner, then you have an asset of $40K. The appraiser and the bank don’t appear to know anything about FAFSA.</p>
That does not matter to FAFSA. It is the same when a child/parent has a trust fund they can’t yet access, FAFSA still treats it as an asset and requires that it be reported. As others have said, banks/appraisers/CPAs generally don’t know anything about FAFSA.</p>
<p>Agree, it’s still an asset regardless of what it takes to convert it to cash. Many people have assets that cannot be easily (if at all) converted to cash quickly. Just find out what it could sell for quickly and use your percentage of ownership. I call realtors each year and ask them “If I had to sell this land in 2 weeks where would I have to price it” and save their responses. I use their responses to value the land. That number should of course be significantly lower than what you price the land if you didn’t care how long it took to sell it.</p>