According to a new survey, nearly one in five (19%) U.S. homeowners say they either do not have clear title and deed to their home or are unsure whether they have clear title and recorded deed to their home.
Most homeowners may have little reason to think about these documents until they need them. But a title and deed are the legal records of who owns a home — and whether that ownership can be passed down from one generation to the next.
“This will cause a lot of damage later.” Rachel Gallegosan attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, tells Realtor.com®.
On the eve of the great wealth transfer, the use of these records becomes increasingly important. Cerulli Associates estimates that Americans will transfer $124 trillion by 2048, including $105 trillion to heirs.
Assets that change hands include houses. If the ownership details don’t change, a home can stay in one family for years before anyone realizes there’s a problem.
The Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta’s new survey offers insight into how many homeowners may already be facing this transfer and have basic questions about their property unanswered.
How a House Gets a Confused Title
The property issues Gallegos deals with at Community Legal Services have a name: confused titles.
“Tangled Title basically means that you live in a house and you’re not the owner of the record,” Gallegos says.
The term can also include deed theft and trespassing, but many of the families she represents are heirs to homes whose estates never went through probate.
“People don’t realize that you should do probate to access homeownership opportunities,” Gallegos says.
However, the process can be time-consuming and costly and hits families at an extremely vulnerable time.
Gallegos says loved ones may be struggling “in the midst of the loss of a loved one and all the grief and all the trauma” while also “finding the money to bury your person.”
Without another asset to provide an immediate reason to open the property, families may not see why they need to do so, she says.
“Let me go to the probate office and pay a few hundred dollars to open an estate. What exactly do I need to do?” says Gallegos, describing the question families may face.
Often the reason only becomes clear when something else goes wrong. Gallegos says clients often come to her office with another issue that’s already affecting the home: a mortgage foreclosure, property tax or utility debt, or repairs they don’t have access to.
A repair can uncover years of unresolved ownership
It’s something Derrik Thomas learned firsthand from his own family’s experience.
Before he began working on convoluted titles professionally, Thomas and his mother were dealing with a problem involving their own family home in Pittsburgh.
“We want to renovate our house and make it better, but we’re not the record owner,” Thomas tells Realtor.com. “So it kind of limits what we can do with the property.”
These limitations are most common when accessing financial assistance programs.
Heather Waya clinical professor who directs the Housing Policy Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law recently reviewed 59 programs in 25 states. Some required applicants to have a clear title. Others required the consent of additional heirs before support could be approved.
Thomas sees the same ownership problem cropping up in other ways. Today he works as a program manager at Will Power, a program that focuses on estate planning and title confusion prevention.
He says some families have lived in a house for years without realizing the title was unclear. They may not find out until they apply for a home ownership allowance, such as a home tax exemption, and must prove that they are the legal owner.
Will Power is trying to identify these problems earlier. It hosts four to six workshops per month at community centers, senior centers, churches and other nonprofit organizations. Thomas and his colleagues explain how families can resolve a complicated title and refer those in need of legal help to Community Legal Services.
But getting a family to release the title can be a significant expense.
Pew estimated that resolving a relatively straightforward legal dispute through probate in Philadelphia would cost $9,198 for a home valued at $88,800 without subsidized legal assistance or fee waivers – about 10.4% of the home’s assessed value.
The problem is concentrated in some parts of the city
There is no national registry of all heirs or entangled titles in the United States, but researchers looking closely at individual housing markets have found thousands of affected homes.
way and Noah DurstAssociate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University, identified 10,048 single-family heir properties in Dallas and Tarrant counties.
Together, these properties were worth more than $2.2 billion.
Even more telling, however, was where this wealth was concentrated: 43% of the properties were located in just 10% of the two counties’ census tracts. The researchers found particularly high concentrations in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods with large proportions of black and Latino homeowners.
Philadelphia researchers found a similar pattern.
Pew identified at least 10,407 residential properties worth more than $1.1 billion. More than half were in the north, upper north, southwest, and west of Philadelphia, although these districts accounted for only about a third of the city’s residential real estate.
Gallegos says the convoluted titles her organization sees are “largely focused on black and brown communities.”
She connects this pattern to the long history of unequal access to home ownership and wealth. Thomas points out another obstacle: Low-income homeowners may view wills and estate planning as something intended for wealthy families, while the costs of estate administration and distrust of legal institutions can make formalizing ownership difficult.
How a title problem becomes a property problem
Over time, these barriers can determine how much of the home a family actually controls—and whether one generation can pass ownership intact to the next.
When property is divided among multiple relatives, families may lose control over what happens to the home. At this point, the resident of the apartment is only allowed to own one share of it. A will can designate who inherits that share, but it cannot gift shares that legally belong to other relatives.
“We can’t write you a will that gives full ownership to your daughter, your grandchild, or whoever you want,” Gallegos says of some of the most complicated cases.
In Way and Durst’s study of property tax foreclosures in Dallas and Tarrant counties, heir properties accounted for 52% of the tax-foreclosed single-family homes in each county studied by researchers.
And some title issues cannot be fully resolved.
“Not every title can be unraveled,” says Gallegos. “Sometimes it’s a delay, but sometimes it’s total prevention, and that wealth is lost.”
That’s why Gallegos and Thomas are focused on preventing the problem before it starts.
“We realized that untangling titles is part of it, but how do we prevent that? Estate planning,” she explains.
But it wasn’t easy work. She says many people resist the idea because it is associated with death: “We’re all going to live forever. We don’t want to invite death. We don’t want to think about it,” she says.
Even people who understand what’s at stake can put it off — Gallegos says she didn’t have a will until the COVID-19 pandemic.
For eligible homeowners in Philadelphia, Community Legal Services offers free estate planning assistance. His attorneys prepare wills and other documents to help homeowners determine what will happen to their property after death.
Affordable Housing Centers of Pennsylvania also offers free will preparation as part of its estate planning work. The organization says it created 307 wills in 2025.
The cost difference can be significant. An eligible homeowner may not have to pay anything for this assistance. Pew estimated that resolving a relatively straightforward, tangled title after death could cost about $9,200 without assistance.
Thomas’ organization is now trying to introduce the idea at the beginning of home ownership. Affordable Housing Centers of Pennsylvania has begun incorporating estate planning into its first-time buyer work.
Thomas boils it down to one question: “Have you thought about who will inherit your property?”
