Heir's Property in an Urban Context

Heirs’ property owners are susceptible to family land loss due to the precarity of their shared ownership structure. They are also often limited in their access to the economic value of their land since they do not have clear, marketable title. Although often discussed as a rural issue, heirs’ property manifests in urban areas, as well, where these properties have spillover effects, particularly in historically disinvested communities that experience deeper susceptibility to shocks and stresses. Using the Jacksonville, FL area as a case study, we first estimate the extent of residential heirs’ property in this area. We do this using property records data. Based on these figures, we address the cumulative impacts these properties have on individual families, neighborhoods, and the broader urban region. We make efforts to account for the economic impact of these properties, on an individual family level as well as a community level. We also consider the intersection of heirs’ property with system shocks, such as recent hurricanes, as well as historic practices of racial exclusion. Our research finds that urban heirs’ property in this setting share many characteristics prior research has associated with rural heirs’ properties. Heirs’ properties tend to be found within lower-income, low-wealth (in terms of housing equity), low educational attainment, and racial and ethnic minority communities. Our regression results also indicated that neighborhoods with a higher share of the population that is Black had a significant and positive impact on heirs’ property concentration. Our spatial analysis of historic redlining practices indicated significant overlap between the concentration of heirs’ property and those areas explicitly excluded from mainstream financial investment on the basis of a neighborhood’s racial composition. We estimate that $5 billion in housing value may be locked or vulnerable to land loss in Duval County due to heirs’ property status. These properties tend to be older, have elevated vulnerability to flooding based on claims filed after Hurricane Irma, and are less likely to be insured, meaning that they are ill-prepared and at high risk for events that could further depreciate or destroy homes owned by heirs as tenants in common.