<p>What I understand so far, please correct me if I'm wrong:
1) FAFSA does not consider primary residence home equity at all - no college that takes FAFSA only will consider how much of your primary residence you own
2) CSS/Profile does consider primary residence home equity
3) Schools that use CSS/Profile can still choose to use primary residence home equity or not
4) And the NPC for each school should reflect whether or not that school considers primary residence home equity</p>
<p>What I don't understand, is people talking about "no cap" and 1.2x cap and 2.4x cap based on income. Does that mean that if my spouse and I make $150,000 per year, the school ignores 2.4 * $150,000 = $360,000 of home equity, and then past that we are expected to use that as cash? I don't think vice versa makes sense (that 2.4x is the most we can pay a portion of for college).</p>
<p>And someone mentioned 5% of the home equity - so if we had $100,000 over that limit, would we be expected to pay $5,000 per year from our home equity, which would be added to our EFC calculated based on everything else?</p>
<p>Finally - as the home equity decreases, let's say we pay our $35,000 EFC from it for year 1 of college, now we have only $65,000 left in the home equity, so our EFC would be reduced to $3,250?</p>
<p>We are looking for schools that only take FAFSA and not CSS/Profile, but we also don't want to limit him if some schools don't consider home equity.</p>
<p>(and is there a list of schools and how they treat a primary residence?)</p>
<p>As always, THANK YOU for any responses. The FA issue is so confusing. When you are talking care of extended family, it is difficult to make sure everybody is accounted for.</p>