Homeownership has historically been a durable pathway to wealth building in the United States. The ability to pass an asset that increases in value to family members can help build intergenerational wealth. However, for low- and moderate-income (LMI) households, and disproportionately for Black and Latinx families, homeownership doesn’t reliably translate into wealth. One of the least visible barriers is tangled titles—sometimes called heirs’ property—which occurs when a deed remains in a deceased owner’s name while ownership is effectively divided, informally and without legal clarity, among surviving family members. Without clear title and estate planning, this asset can become a legal and financial liability, undermining homeownership’s stabilizing and wealth-building role precisely when families need it most.

The experience of Catapult Greater Pittsburgh—and specifically its CLEAR (Clinic for Legal Equity and Repairs) program—shows these challenges aren’t marginal legal issues but core constraints on whether homeownership delivers intergenerational wealth or exposes families and neighborhoods to risk. Catapult expanded its CLEAR program with the support of the Housing Innovation Program, and their work offers lessons for the field in how to ensure the sustainability of homeownership as a wealth-building mechanism.

From homeownership to heirs’ property

Many homeowners successfully purchase homes, sustain mortgage payments, and remain in place for decades. But for LMI households, and Black families in particular, homeownership has been harder to achieve and to sustain: The Black homeownership rate stood at 44.3 percent in 2022—far below the 65.1 percent rate for all households—a gap that’s wider today than it was before the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968. Black families who do inherit homes are also disproportionately likely to face barriers to clear title and probate. Nearly 70 percent of older non-Latinx Black homeowners have neither a will nor a trust and are more likely than white homeowners to have multiple children who would inherit fractional shares—setting the stage for a tangled title. Though tangled title affects LMI households across racial groups—including white families in rural Appalachia and the South—Black and Latinx households are overrepresented among those affected, in part because they are disproportionately likely to have low incomes. For these households, when ownership isn’t legally transferred at death, inherited homes can quickly become liabilities.

Without a will or probate, ownership isn’t legally transferred at death, and properties fall into tangled title status. Instead, property rights are divided among surviving children, grandchildren, or other relatives—none of whom can legally sell the home or use it as loan collateral to finance improvements or repairs. Over time, deferred maintenance accumulates, code violations follow, and the home can become a deteriorating liability. Owner-occupied homes acquired through inheritance are more likely than other homes to be in physically inadequate condition. Without title clearance, heirs can’t access the loan products needed to fund repairs. When the cost of maintenance exceeds what families can absorb out of pocket, gradual deterioration can ultimately render a home uninhabitable, and what was once a valuable asset becomes a vacant property.

These individual losses aren’t contained to individual properties. In Pittsburgh, Catapult estimates that tens of thousands of vacant properties—many concentrated in historically LMI and Black neighborhoods—are linked to challenges of title transfer and estate planning. These properties often sit vacant not because families don’t care about them, but because no one can legally sell, mortgage, or finance their repair. Over time, what begins as an occupied inherited home deteriorates into a vacant property that pulls down surrounding values and erodes wealth for entire blocks. The result can launch a damaging cycle of depreciation and disinvestment, in which vacant homes deter external capital investment and lower the appraised values of neighboring properties, limiting nearby homeowners’ access to financing.

Addressing structural barriers to estate planning

Recognizing these multilayered issues, Catapult created the CLEAR program to address tangled title directly. Catapult’s CLEAR program routinely works with LMI residents who have lived in their family homes for years, sometimes since childhood, only to discover that the deed remains in a deceased parent’s or grandparent’s name. CLEAR provides legal title clearance and estate planning, but, crucially, it does so alongside health and safety home repairs. This pairing matters: Title without repairs can leave families legally responsible for unsafe homes they can’t afford to fix. Repairs without title leave families vulnerable to future loss. As Tammy Thompson, Catapult’s president and CEO, puts it, “In order to break generational poverty, we also have to make sure that home makes it to the next generation.” When that transfer fails, the consequences extend far beyond a single family.

CLEAR’s work on title clearance also exposes why estate planning remains out of reach for many families. Title clearance can require reconstructing complex family trees, locating distant relatives, resolving contested paternity, and coordinating signatures across states or nursing homes—a process Catapult describes as intimate and labor-intensive, requiring hands-on case management to help heirs navigate legal and repair systems simultaneously. In one case, staff coordinated notarization across 14 heirs, including 1 out of state and another in assisted care. Financial barriers compound these challenges. Pennsylvania’s inheritance tax, one of the highest in the country, can prevent families with limited resources from probating even existing wills, and in these cases, Catapult covers the tax costs directly to keep properties from remaining frozen in legal limbo. Recognizing that legal resolution alone is insufficient, Catapult also provides comprehensive financial education that equips homeowners and heirs with the tools to understand and navigate title resolution, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance over the long-term.

Because this work is sensitive, requiring detailed family histories and difficult conversations, trust is foundational to Catapult’s model. The organization relies on long-standing community relationships and clear and consistent communication about the process to build that trust, particularly with seniors who are rightly wary of scams. Central to that trust building is Catapult’s network of vetted contractors, who ensure repair work is done reliably and at fair cost—an element as essential to the program’s credibility as its legal services. To expand capacity and reduce wait times, Catapult has also built a dedicated network of volunteer attorneys and resource providers, bringing specialized expertise to complex cases and ensuring families receive comprehensive care.

Catapult is also explicit with clients about the limits of what retention can achieve. When rehabilitation costs are too high, Catapult works with Rising Tide Partners, a local land-recycling nonprofit, to facilitate a sale at fair value, keeping properties out of speculative hands. But Rising Tide’s role extends beyond individual transactions: Once a CLEAR participant’s home is identified, Rising Tide evaluates the block and may acquire and rehab neighboring properties that may otherwise drive down property values.

Estate planning as wealth-building policy

The lessons from Pittsburgh point to a broader conclusion: Clear title and estate planning are core wealth-building infrastructure. If communities want homeownership to generate wealth for all their residents—particularly those with low rates of homeownership and wealth, like LMI households and households of color—policy and practice must treat estate planning as integral to housing policy. That includes:

1. Recognizing heirs’ property resolution as an affordable homeownership strategy, meaning funding title clearance and estate planning services with the same seriousness as down payment assistance or foreclosure prevention programs, and counting successful title clearances as measurable affordable homeownership outcomes.
2. Expanding access to estate planning and title clearance services, including through state-authorized funding for pro bono legal assistance, financial counseling for homeowners who lack the liquidity to cover estate planning costs, and adoption of transfer-on-death deeds—a less costly and time-intensive alternative to probate that would be enabled for real property in Pennsylvania under pending legislation.
3. Pairing legal interventions with repair and stabilization funding, recognizing that title clearance without resources to maintain or improve a property can worsen rather than improve a family’s financial position.
4. Addressing neighborhood-level impacts of vacancy and abandonment, including the role of systemic undervaluation of homes (PDF) in perpetuating depressed home values even in stabilizing neighborhoods.

Homeownership can only build wealth across generations if ownership itself is legally secure and intentionally transferred. Without clear title and succession planning, the promise of wealth-building homeownership can collapse across generations.