I am confused about why the beach house would be put in either your FAFSA or CSS Profile.
Unless I am missing something, my understanding is the house is not yours. Your parents have the deed to the house in their name, pay the taxes, but you are just in your parents will?
Maybe I am misinterpreting something.
EDIT: So you have the title, but you don’t pay for the property tax and maintenance, your parents do.
Restrictions of the will prevent you from selling the property?
I guess I’m with some of the other posters. If if is a prime location, renting would not be too hard and you could probably bring in a lot depending on the location.
Another idea is you could sell your current home and move to the beach house:P:P
@Jpgranier - You answered your own question. It belongs to the parents and parents income and assets are the bulk of both the FAFSA and the CSS Profile.
@ClaremontMom for some reason I was thinking OP was a parent, not a student. I was confused about how a student’s grandparent’s assets contributed to EFC
All of those private schools that will look at the CSS will probably treat the beach house $ even worse than the number you got from the FAFSA. You really should scratch that whole list of schools and start fresh with the budget that your parents can afford. They don’t need to give you the specifics if they don’t want to but they do need to give you an amount so you can apply to schools you can afford.
I’m still stuck on this not-allowed-to-sell-the-house issue. Someone can stipulate in his will that he is bequeathing his beach house to someone, and the inheritor is not permitted to sell it? What if the person doesn’t want the house? Clearly this family is not in a position to own this beach house. The grandparents of the student (parents of the beach-house owner) are paying the cost of ownership, and the house is a big complication for financial aid. This house is not doing them any favors!
I just noticed you are from NJ. If this is a Jersey shore property, it is worth a lot of money. I would see if there were any way possible to sell it and use the money to full-pay college for the three kids. Or, as others have said, RENT IT. You can get at least $2k-$5k a week during the season, depending on how many bedrooms.
Perhaps it’s some sort of strange deal where the house was inherited by the parent, but with a life estate attached (i.e., another relative retains the right to live in it until death)? That could be a reason it can’t be sold or rented…pure speculation, but odd circumstances could exist. In such a case, though, shouldn’t the current value of the property to the parent be significantly reduced? In other words, if there is some restriction on the ownership, I would devalue its reportable worth.
Maybe the grandparents are engaging in Medicaid planning and asked to not inherit the house so as to keep their assets down. Perhaps they would be willing to help out with college costs given that they apparently have enough funds to pay for the house that they don’t own.
OP didn’t say the parents couldn’t sell the house, he said they can’t transfer it to another family member. The parents have apparently had conversations about selling it and what they would do with the money if they did. It sounds to me like an asset colleges might expect them to borrow against to help pay for school.
Excellent point! That is, if there indeed is some restriction on selling it. We don’t know. OP just said that “it’s apparently illegal to transfer an inherited property to somebody else within the family,” which makes not sense to me. Not illegal.
Good thought. This is entirely possible. In this case, the parents of the student should borrow against the property (can you get a HELOC on a non-primary property?). Then they can sell the property at some point in the future to pay off the HELOC.
Im a senior who has already applied to the majority of colleges on that list. I’m being honest, I don’t know the full disclosure of the restraints on selling the beach house. All I know is my parents have said they don’t want to sell it at this time, they don’t pay for the house (its only in their name), and their is a stipulation in the will that the house cannot be transferred to another family member.
My parents have 50k set aside for my college tuition that they are willing to contribute, and I am also recieving an inheritance around 50k from the same relative who gave us the beach house. It was my aunt who was wealthy, she had no children so the estate is being divided between 18 of her nieces and nephews. The amount of my inheritance hasn’t been confirmed yet since everything has to be divided down so much, but thats the estimate.
Pretty much what I’ve gathered from this thread is that I should just forget about every other college and go to Rutgers, theres no hope for me receiving any money anywhere, and I’m most likely going to have massive debt either way.
…Although this advice is brutal/somewhat true, its hard to hear right now as a stressed out Senior just trying to get through applying to college. Is there any hope for me being able to go to any of the colleges on that list?!
Why would you have massive debt? You will have about $100k to work with, that is $25k a year. With a $5k student loan it is $30k a year. With summer earnings $33k. That doesn’t pay for a decent school, in addition to Rutgers?
What people are telling you is that an extra property in your parents’ name will be assessed as an investment by FA calculations.
Once that $50k inheritance hits, your EFC will be even higher.
You’ll likely get into Fordham. Maybe they’ll give you merit money. Did you look for colleges that would give you merit money?
Also, you said your parents set aside $50k for college for you. Any chance they could contribute additional from their current income? Maybe another $7k?
Also, ask them if they’d be willing to take out a home equity loan OR a home equity line of credit against the beach house, to be paid back upon sale of the house (sometime in the future I assume they will be allowed to sell it).
@brantly my parents have talked about taking out a home equity loan on our house, since they have it paid off already and it would be easier for my sister and I to pay back without a huge interest rate.
I dont think my parents will contribute any more. My little sister still has to go to college as well, and to be honest our income is still kind of tight with the cost of living in new jersey and having only 1 parent working for 5 people.
Merit Schools I’ve added are Boston College, maybe University of Richmond. I might add Penn State or Delaware since their oos tuition is around 40k as compared to 60k for a lot of my other colleges.
I guess there really is no solution or right answer. Only time will tell
@jjohnross Most of the schools listed in post #18 also require the css profile. Each school will calculate its own EFC, which will likely be even higher than your FAFSA EFC. Did you run the Net Price Calculators for each school to see if the price is in the ballpark of what your family can afford? (what is that amount available for each year? $15K? $20K? $25K?). You need to get a firm number from your parents so you can compare to costs from the NPCs. I think you definitely need to add more affordable schools to your list.
It is very tough to realize that you may not be able to afford to attend one of your dream schools, but it is better to realize this now, while you still have time to apply to more schools which have a higher l chance of being affordable for your family. Your stats are good, and you would likely be admitted to some of the schools on your current list, but your stats are not quite high enough to qualify for big merit scholarships that you would need to attend them. My 35 ACT D was offered $15K in merit from Villanova 2 years ago, it is not likely to be affordable for you.
Since you live in NJ, consider applying to Rowan University. Your stats should get you some significant merit$ there, and there has been a lot of $$ invested in the campus over recent years. They have good engineering, science, and medical programs, as well as a solid business school. A family friend is a Bio professor at Rowan, and she speaks very highly of her students and the administration there. My youngest D, OOS was offered $15K/yr in merit from Rowan last year. We were very impressed on our visits, and the school is becoming very popular in our area (our state borders NJ), since its merit scholarships often make Rowan end up being cheaper than our State U (that is how it turned out for my D). I think Temple might offer you enough merit $ to meet your budget, but since they just discontinued their guaranteed merit this year, no one knows how that will play out. My youngest started at Temple’s Fox School of Business this year, loves it. and is doing well.
It stinks to learn that you probably can’t afford your favorite schools, but many, many students end up in the same boat, my own included. All 3 kids ended up at schools we can afford and have done great. We ran NPCs, looked at financial aid /scholarship info. very closely, and they only applied to schools where they had either guaranteed merit, or were in the top 5-10% of stats , so had a good chance of getting big merit$. It worked for us. It does not make sense to spend a lot of time and $ applying to schools that will likely be too expensive in the end. It will be so much better to have affordable choices.
If you have already applied to the schools you have listed, there is nothing to do but wait to see if they are affordable, and add other affordable schools if you don’t want to go to Rutgers (are there other, cheaper, schools you’d rather go to than Rutgers?). Do I think you’ll get any need based financial aid at any of those schools? No. However, I don’t think you would have even if you didn’t have the beach house. You said your father makes enough to be middle class and you live in NJ, so middle class probably means he makes over $100k. Not much need based aid except at the elite schools.
The schools you listed might have some merit aid for you.
The NPC for some of my schools came out as follows:
Rutgers -full tuition no financial aid or anything
American -30,000 (seems abnormally low, but if this is true then thats great!)
Syracuse- 45,000
Fordham, 45,000
Pitt, Vermont would most likely be 40,000 to 45,000
If a lot of my schools come out to the lower 40,000 range, I think that would be doable. So many kids in my area go to schools like Penn State and Delaware and pay full price and somehow manage to be okay, so there must be a way. I’m just going to cross my fingers, apply to a few cheaper schools and hope for the best.
This situation has really just screwed me over lol but thats life.
