Unlocking the Potential in Heirs’ Properties

Heirs’ property, sometimes known as “family land,” refers to the situation in which a legally designated property owner dies without a probated will, resulting in ownership of their property being equally divided among the owner's descendants. These types of properties are found throughout the United States in urban, suburban, and rural communities. When unclear ownership is allowed to linger, negative outcomes follow. Stuck in legal limbo, heirs’ properties can fall into disrepair and become vacant or tax delinquent.

Neighborhoods with a high number of vacant or tax delinquent properties face a host of negative impacts, including:

• Worse public health outcomes: Unsafe environments for occupants (e.g., lead, asbestos), neighbors (e.g., attracting crime, rodent harborage, physical threat), and harm to mental health

• Loss of individual wealth: The value of surrounding properties decline, threatening homeowners’ investment; insurance premiums rise; property deterioration can exceed cost-effective repair; and the lack of clear title can restrict heirs from qualifying for property repair assistance, receiving property tax relief, or selling the property

• Diminishing community fiscal stability: Lower property values from vacant and deteriorated properties lead to reduced tax base, while simultaneously municipal service costs rise (e.g., fire response, police response, code enforcement)

Of Georgia's 159 counties, 120 are considered rural. Challenges with heirs’ properties are a primary barrier to revitalization strategies in these rural counties, and heirs' properties disparately impact Black neighborhoods due to the deep roots of institutional and structural racism. However, the lack of a data-driven analysis on the scale and location of these heirs' properties presented a barrier to effectively addressing them.

In 2017, the  Carl Vinson Institute of Government  (CVIOG) published a report entitled Identifying Potential Heirs Property in the Southeastern United States: A new GIS methodology using mass appraisal data, in conjunction with the U.S. Forest Service. This report examined the possibility of using digital data compiled by local tax assessment officials to assess the relative significance of the occurrence of heirs’ property, often referred to as computer assisted mass appraisal data, or computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) data. 

Previous efforts to assess the extent of heirs’ property in a community involved manual review of tax assessor’s paper records and deeds. This approach is extremely cumbersome and time consuming. Utilizing CAMA data streamlines that process, at least as an initial prioritization tool. This project found the relatively uniform format of CAMA data across Georgia's counties provided opportunities to identify factors that can indicate the relative extent and impact of heirs’ property across Georgia communities.

To advance the Center for Community Progress’ understanding of heirs’ property issues in rural Georgia and CVIOG’s interest in refining its research methodology with CAMA data, Community Progress commissioned this analysis of three rural counties: Crisp, Dougherty, and Worth. This project extends the mass appraisal data approach by using census data and CAMA data in Georgia to automate and further refine the heirs’ property identification process. It also allows for a spatially oriented, geographic assessment of potential heirs’ properties. In this way, the project demonstrates a promising new research methodology that may be applied more broadly to conduct statistical and comparative analyses.

This study examines potential heirs' properties in Crisp, Dougherty, and Worth counties, three rural counties with cleaned CAMA data.

Using demographic indicators, UGA identified geographic clusters of communities likely to have populations owning higher than average concentrations of heirs’ properties. We then measured the relative concentrations of heirs’ properties in these communities by analyzing characteristics of the properties within the counties contained in local parcel datasets used in computer-assisted mass appraisals.

UGA isolated the following four demographic variables to help identify communities that may have above-average numbers of heirs’ properties:

• High percentage of population identified as a racial or ethnic minority
• Low per capita income (overall community wealth)
• High poverty rate (percentage of people living below the poverty line)
• High percentage of individuals over 25 years of age without a high school diploma.

We identified counties with percentages at the 90th percentile or higher for each of the above variables and overlaid them with additional filters designed to screen out parcels which likely have good title. Those filters are:

• Owned by “natural people”: Heirs’ properties are owned by real people. Therefore, we eliminated parcels titled to a business, government, school, church, or other organization.
• No preferential tax status: Land use policy such as the conservation of agricultural, historic, timber, or environmentally sensitive land is often promoted through preferential taxation. Because qualification for preferential tax status requires a landowner to apply to the local board of tax assessors and dedicate the land to a qualifying use, parcels with preferential tax status are less likely to be heirs’ properties. Therefore, we eliminated parcels indicating preferential tax status.
• Parcels with older transfer date: The longer it has been since a property has changed hands, the more likely it is an heirs' property. For the purposes of this analysis, based on interviews with legal professionals we expect that parcels that have not been transferred in more than 30 years have a substantially greater likelihood of being heirs' properties.

We conducted identification of potential heirs' property at the parcel level. However, to preserve the privacy of heirs' property owners, we have aggregated the results to the census block level. The choropleth (shaded) maps below illustrate the concentration of potential heirs' properties in each of the three counties, categorized by census block group. The maps employ the quantile classification method to classify the proportion of potential heirs' property within the selected counties. In this scheme, a darker color signifies a higher concentration of potential heirs' properties. High concentrations of potential heirs' property are dispersed throughout the counties (represented by deep blue color).

Note: Please click on the respective census block on the interactive maps to access detailed information, including the block name, the count of parcels designated as potential heirs' property, total number of parcels within each block, and proportion of potential heirs' property in the selected counties. This will allow you to obtain detailed insights into the distribution and prevalence of potential heirs' property in the specified areas.

In Crisp County, 39 percent of parcels have been identified as potential heirs' properties, indicating a significant presence of unresolved inheritance issues. This accounts for approximately 11 percent of the total land area. Around 30 percent of the overall land value, equivalent to an assessed value of approximately $490 million, is affected.

In Dougherty County, 23 percent of parcels are identified as potential heirs' properties, suggesting a relatively smaller proportion of unresolved inheritance cases in the area. The potential heirs' properties represent 10 percent of the land area. Moreover, around 40 percent of the overall land value, amounting to an assessed value of approximately $860 million, is affected, emphasizing the economic implications of resolving ownership disputes.

In Worth County, 43 percent of parcels are identified as potential heirs' properties, indicating a significant prevalence of unresolved inheritance matters. This accounts for approximately 9 percent of the land area. Furthermore, approximately 24 percent of the overall land value, equivalent to an assessed value of approximately $400 million.

Some executive summary observations across all three counties include:

• The percentage of parcels indicating potential heirs’ properties ranged from 23 percent in Dougherty County to 43 percent in Worth County.
• The land area affected was, on average, 10 percent of each county’s area.
• The identified parcels total 71,764 acres (112 square miles) and have an assessed value of $1.75 billion. This is approximately the size of the City of Athens, Georgia.

We created another choropleth map to depict the likelihood of concentrated heirs' property within each county in Georgia, based on demographic flags that increase the probability of high heirs' property concentration. The map classifies the data into five categories, ranging from 0 to 4 flags. The use of darker colors on the map indicates a higher probability (HP) of encountering a greater concentration of potential heirs' properties. The southern region of Georgia demonstrates a greater number of counties characterized by a higher count of HP flags.

Map Navigation Notes: Please click on the counties to access additional information.

• The variable Individuals Living in Poverty Flag indicates counties where the percentage of individuals living in poverty is in the 90th percentile in the United States, using a value of 1 = yes and 0 = no.
• The variable Income Per Capita Flag indicates counties with per capita income in the 90th percentile in the United States, using a value of 1 = yes and 0 = no.
• The variable Individuals with No High School Diploma Flag indicates counties where the percentage of individuals with no high school diploma is in the 90th percentile in the United States, using a value of 1 = yes and 0 = no.
• The variable Minority Population Flag indicates whether a county's percentage of racial or ethnic minority falls within the 90th percentile in the United States, using a value of 1 = yes and 0 = no.
• Each county received a Potential Heirs' Property Indicator score between 0 and 4, with 4 representing counties in the top 10 percent for every criterion and 0 representing those that were not in the top 10 percent for any criterion. Counties with the highest scores were identified as the most likely to contain higher numbers of heirs’ properties.

This work aimed to develop a methodology for identifying areas where heirs’ properties are likely clustered within a specific county. A high concentration of heirs' properties signals the need for more in depth local research and prioritization of that area for focused deployment of technical assistance, education and outreach, and other resources. As the state level map suggests that there are relatively few counties displaying all of the social vulnerabilities and parcel characteristics, a focused look at those identified counties is merited.

While heirs’ properties are distributed throughout these three counties, For the three rural counties analyzed here, we see that wthere are also clear zones of greater concentration. This suggests that technical assistance and education could be directed first to those areas. This assumption should be confirmed with local partners. There may be other factors at work making it easier to resolve an heirs’ property case in an area with less concentration. Future research might show which nonprofits include these counties in their service areas to help create a gap analysis for service provision, education, and outreach.

This work also shows that heirs’ properties are trapping a sizeable amount of land value. These heirs' properties precipitate negative outcomes, failing to grow the family’s generational wealth or contribute to the local tax digest. At a time when rural counties face shortages in affordable housing, access to health care, and broadband connectivity, this money is critical to revive community fiscal stability.

Analyses of the CAMA data indicate that those counties highlighted in the regional demographic analysis have higher concentrations of potential heirs properties when compared to the larger sample of Georgia counties examined with the same methodology.There is some indication that the demographic variable most closely related to the concentration of heirs property may be the proportion of the population that identifies as a minority.

Finally, we must acknowledge the disparate racial impact of Georgia’s history of structural and institutional racism. While a more comprehensive heirs' property analysis of all counties needs to be conducted to draw clearer conclusions about the relative significance of any particular demographic variables or property characteristics, this legacy is evident. This likely results in more Black residents living in unacceptable conditions because their home is trapped in heirs’ property disputes and therefore unavailable for repairs and reinvestment, or living under the specter of losing the a long held family asset. Understanding the specific contours of these impacts should inform the solutions and partnerships developed to help resolve ownership questions.

This report was prepared by J. Scott Pippin, Esq., Public Service Associate and Nemin Wu, Temporary Technical Paraprofessional and PhD student in Geograghy and Jimmy Nolan , Local Government Project Manager with the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government and Odetta MacLeish-White, Director, Georgia Initiatives with the Center for Community Progress.

We are grateful to the many members of the heirs property community who—through their research, community engagement, and direct legal assistance—have labored to raise awareness about the challenges associated with unstable property ownership.

For questions or additional information please contact:

•  Odetta MacLeish-White , Director of Georgia Initiatives for Community Progress,  omacleishwhite@communityprogress.org 
•  J. Scott Pippin , Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia,  jspippin@uga.edu 
•  Nemin Wu , PhD Student in Geography, University of Georgia,  nemin.wu@uga.edu