Sources

Every figure, and where it comes from.

Each figure is shown with its own study, the page it comes from, and what it counts.

A note on method

Counts are estimates. Definitions and coverage differ across studies, so figures from different studies should not be added together. City studies are labeled as city studies, and our own arithmetic is labeled as ours.

Housing Assistance Council for Fannie Mae (Dec 2023, corrected Mar 2024)

Moodie, Wiley, George · 2023

580,371 properties identified as heirs’ property, 0.6% of 94,201,062 residential properties
Page: p.23
Shown on: /market-size
Type: national
Counts: of residential properties identified, 44 states + DC; excludes vacant land and farmland; a minimum estimate
Status: verified
$32.3 billion total assessed value of identified heirs’ properties
Page: p.31 (also p.5)
Shown on: /market-size
Type: national
Counts: same 44 states + DC; a minimum estimate; some counties had no assessed values reported
Status: verified
64.5% vs 30% of identified heirs’ properties are in rural census tracts, which hold 30% of all residential properties
Page: p.27
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: national
Counts: of identified heirs’ properties vs of all residential properties; FHFA Duty to Serve 2022 rural definition
Status: verified
1.2% vs 0.6% heirs’ property rate in persistent-poverty counties vs elsewhere
Page: p.28
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: national
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Status: verified
1.6% vs 0.4% heirs’ property rate in counties that lost population (2010–2020) vs counties that did not
Page: p.29
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: national
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Caveat: The study says results may vary at state or regional level.
Status: verified
5% to 15% of residential properties in the ten highest-prevalence counties are most likely heirs’ property
Page: p.21
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: county
Counts: of residential properties in those ten counties
Status: verified
$84 trillion HAC cites research estimating $84 trillion will transfer from Baby Boomers by 2045
Page: p.8 (footnote 7)
Shown on: /market-size
Type: national
Counts: background statement citing other research; not a finding of this study
Status: verified
“Heirs property owners are vulnerable to forced sales and property loss”
Page: p.4
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“written consensus among all living heirs”
Page: p.10
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“significantly below market value, resulting in a loss of wealth for the family”
Page: p.10
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“property loss, loss of generational wealth, abandonment, and community blight”
Page: p.10
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“The probate process through the local courts is a necessary step for most properties upon the death of the owner. The result is a tangled title.”
Page: p.10
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“A clear title is needed to sell the home at market rate or to obtain a mortgage, loans for upkeep, or insurance.”
Page: p.4
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
10.09% of residential properties identified as heirs’ property in West Virginia
Page: p.25 (Table 4)
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Status: verified
4.45% of residential properties identified as heirs’ property in Alabama
Page: p.25 (Table 4)
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Status: verified
3.20% of residential properties identified as heirs’ property in Montana
Page: p.25 (Table 4)
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Status: verified
1.94% of residential properties identified as heirs’ property in North Carolina
Page: p.25 (Table 4)
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Status: verified
1.78% of residential properties identified as heirs’ property in Mississippi
Page: p.25 (Table 4)
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Status: verified
0.09% of residential properties identified as heirs’ property in Texas
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of residential properties identified as heirs’ property
Status: verified

Dobbs & Johnson Gaither (2023)

Dobbs & Johnson Gaither · 2023 · parcel data: LightBox, supplied via USDA Forest Service, Nov 2021

444,172 parcels; 9,247,452 acres heirs’ parcels, and the acres they cover
Page: PDF p.12–13 (Table 2 totals; Results text)
Shown on: /market-size
Type: national
Counts: of parcels, all 50 states + DC; name-based identification; the authors say aggregated data may severely undercount
Status: verified
$41.3 billion total market value of identified heirs’ parcels
Page: PDF p.12–13 (Table 2 total, in $ thousands)
Shown on: /market-size
Type: national
Counts: of identified heirs’ parcels
Caveat: Market values were not populated for 8 states (CA, CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, SD, VT).
Status: verified
77,462 parcels heirs’ parcels identified in Texas
Page: Table 2
Shown on: / · county scan
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of parcels in Texas; name-based identification
Caveat: Results differ between studies.
Status: verified
$8.47 billion market value of the identified heirs’ parcels in Texas
Page: Table 2
Shown on: / · county scan
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of identified heirs’ parcels in Texas
Caveat: Results differ between studies.
Status: verified
$8.47 billion market value of identified heirs’ parcels in Texas
Page: Table 2
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of identified heirs’ parcels in Texas
Status: verified
$3.6 billion market value of identified heirs’ parcels in Florida
Page: Table 2
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of identified heirs’ parcels in Florida
Status: verified
$3.42 billion market value of identified heirs’ parcels in New York
Page: Table 2
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of identified heirs’ parcels in New York
Status: verified
$2.33 billion market value of identified heirs’ parcels in North Carolina
Page: Table 2
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of identified heirs’ parcels in North Carolina
Status: verified
$2.14 billion market value of identified heirs’ parcels in Maryland
Page: Table 2
Shown on: /where-it-happens
Type: state · State figure
Counts: of identified heirs’ parcels in Maryland
Status: verified

USDA ERS, Burnett & Winters-Michaud (2025)

Burnett & Winters-Michaud · 2025

About 35% (34.9%) of heirs’ parcels recorded in 2021 weren’t flagged as heirs’ property in 2015
Page: p.625–626 (Figure 2)
Shown on: /market-size
Type: national
Counts: of parcels flagged as heirs’ property in 2021, lower 48 states, CoreLogic flag
Caveat: CoreLogic flag; a lower bound; the change may reflect better assessor recording. Total heirs’ parcels fell about 1.1% from 2015 to 2021.
Status: verified
“many uses of the land and property require unanimous consent among all heirs”
Page: p.618
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“under-used and under-developed”
Page: p.622
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“a lower bound on the actual number of such properties”
Page: p.629
Shown on: /market-size
Type: national
Status: verified
“argued to be a leading cause of involuntary land loss”
Page: p.619
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
“the deceased owner’s name remains on a property’s title, even though the property’s ownership has passed to multiple subsequent generations of the deceased’s heirs”
Page: p.618
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: national
Status: verified
The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act gives co-owners a chance to buy out a co-owner who forces a sale, and prefers dividing the property over a forced sale.
Page: p.619
Shown on: /heirs-property-101
Type: national
Status: verified

Pew Charitable Trusts, “How ‘Tangled Titles’ Affect Philadelphia” (2021)

Pew Charitable Trusts · 2021

10,407 at least 10,407 tangled titles in Philadelphia, 2% of residential properties
Page: report summary
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: city · City study
Counts: of residential properties in Philadelphia, identified by death-record matching
Status: verified
32% vs 9% of tangled-title properties are tax-delinquent, vs of residential properties citywide
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: city · City study
Counts: of tangled-title properties vs of all residential properties in Philadelphia
Status: verified
“effectively ‘dead capital’”
Page: p.10
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: city · City study
Status: verified
“When a record owner dies, the deed at the Department of Records continues to bear the name of the deceased unless the heirs take action.”
Page: p.9
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: city · City study
Status: verified
“With a tangled title, in most cases, one can’t sell the home, take out a home equity loan, obtain homeowner’s insurance, or participate in city home repair programs”
Page: p.10
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: city · City study
Status: verified
Pew calls a deceased record owner whose heirs have not acted the most common way a title gets tangled, not the only one.
Shown on: /the-problem
Type: city · City study
Status: verified

Derived from Dobbs & Johnson Gaither (2023), HAC for Fannie Mae (2023) and Pew (2021)

About 5% In Philadelphia, national name-search methods found about 5% of the tangled titles Pew found
Page: DJG PDF p.21; HAC p.37
Shown on: /market-size
Type: city · derived · City study · Our math
Counts: of Pew’s 10,407 Philadelphia tangled titles
Workings: 471 (Dobbs & Johnson Gaither) and 619 (HAC) vs 10,407 (Pew)
Status: verified

Delta pipeline configuration (config/franklin.yaml), Franklin reference setup

Up to 6 up to six public-record sources per county; five live in production (Clerk disabled)
Shown on: /how-it-works
Type: county
Status: verified

Franklin County Auditor bulk Parcel.csv, measured 2026-09-30

484,605 parcels on the Franklin County roll
Shown on: / · funnel
Type: county
Status: verified

Franklin County Auditor bulk file; 141,189 entity-owned parcels removed (pipeline/anchor_request.py)

343,416 individually owned parcels after removing entity owners
Shown on: / · funnel
Type: county · derived · Our math
Status: verified

Delta database, leads not screened out, 2026-09-30

7,641 leads in our database (Franklin County)
Shown on: /how-it-works
Type: county · derived · Our database · Our math
Status: verified

Delta database, status enriched or partial, 2026-09-30

1,427 leads researched in probate, obituaries and recorded deeds (Franklin County)
Shown on: / · funnel
Type: county · derived · Our math
Status: verified

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