I an filling out the CSS Profile with my mom and one of the questions is her estimated net worth. We know this means assets, but we are not sure what to put. We have a home, but we just moved in this summer. How do we find out our home equity? Do we even include the home in net worth since it still has a huge mortgage? What should we put for net worth?
Any equity in real estate is included in net worth. Your home equity equals the value of the property minus the total outstanding balance of all loans secured by the property. Since you moved into your home so recently, I think it would be fine to use the actual purchase price as the home value (assuming you bought the house and moved into it this summer). Example: if the house was purchased for $200,000 and the outstanding balance on the mortgage is $180,000, you have $20,000 equity in the house.