<p>If memory serves, both FAFSA and CSS ask what the purchase price of your properties were, what you still owe, and today's current value. </p>
<p>Of course, no one really knows what their home or property will really sell for. So how does one best answer this question? What is to prevent someone from saying that they paid $200,000 but think the could only get $125,000? </p>
<p>Or is the difference between what you paid and what you owe the only number colleges really look at? Is this figure found somewhere on our tax returns?</p>
<p>I remembering asking this same question on the Financial Aid forum and getting a lot of good info. As I recall, there is a calculator fin aid people use where they plug in your acquisition price (what you paid for your house), the year, the ZIP code, and they calculate the appreciated value. They can also check your estimated value on one of the sites widely available now like Zillow or Trulia. You can also check those – I found Zillow’s estimate to be below what I would sell my house for. </p>
<p>I guess what I’m saying is: put down the most accurate realistic estimate of what you would sell your house for. If your number is too far off reality based on the appreciation calculator and Zillow’s estimate, it might seem “off”.</p>
<p>Well, the calculator seems to think that our home appreciated since 2005. When in reality, it was the other way around. Zillow price seems to be more on target and about 50K lower than calculator price!</p>
<p>If you think the amount is inaccurate, there are a few other ways to come up with an estimated number. You could ask a real estate professional to give you an estimate. You could go online and print out the recent sales prices of comparable houses. I would think if your figure is unusually low, however, you may want to include a comment on the Profile explaining how you got your number.</p>
<p>^^you would add the increased market value of your addition. This would not necessarily be the cost. Some remodels recapture much more of the cost than others.</p>
<p>Apparently my son’s school’s financial aid office decided to ignore the number I put down and use a much higher one they had computed (assuming that our home had appreciated since 2005 which it definitely has not). I was able to send a tax assessment and comparative market analysis from a local real estate agent to document the lower value, and they increased our aid as a result. So… if your house value is quite different than the federal calculator predicts, you might want to check with the school(s) in question and make sure they are using a realistic value, and provide whatever evidence you can to back it up. (There have been so few sales recently in our area, that neither Zillow nor Trulia has an estimate for our home.)</p>
<p>I think that’s a great question Geminimom. I had the same situation as Mathmomvt, and I addressed it with the same supporting documents (and got some relief). But the only way I knew about it is that my award went down from the previous year, when my salary and savings had gone down and my expenses had increased. When I called to ask how that was possible, I was told that my home had appreciated (which it had not) so it was all good! I would never have known otherwise. Honestly, if it had been the first year of our award, I don’t think I"d ever know about the error - its pretty scary. I guess that all you can do if you receive a lower award than expected is to ask about the home valuation.</p>
<p>Our county tried to be close to market value with property tax assessments so we just use that number. I will be more than happy to show what we paid for our house and our current “value” if any school cares to “recalculate” the almost $100,000 we are down on our house right now…</p>
<p>GeminiMom, I also only found out because our award was down from the prior year. I guess you might also be suspicious if you have a fairly straightforward financial situation and your award is much different from their NPC prediction. </p>
<p>Our S’s school wouldn’t say what value they were applying to our house, but I had contacted them to find out what was raising our family contribution to a higher level than I expected, and they volunteered that they had assessed our home at higher than its purchase price. I thought the problem might be something else, which I had raised, but that turned out not to be the issue.</p>
<p>emeraldkity, they do ask for the purchase price, year of purchase, what you ow, and what (you believe) the current value is. But schools can feel free to ignore what you wrote down for current value and come up with a number that they feel may be more correct. So be prepared to back up your claim.</p>
<p>The difference between the FinAid calculator and HPI calculator was $85,000 for me. We had an appraisal done this spring that was somewhere in between the values of the two calculators. Maybe I would be better off providing my kids’ schools with a copy of the appraisal next spring when we start the financial aid process again.</p>