Homelessness is reaching more Houston suburbs, data shows<\/a><\/p>\nBut when speaking to others in the investor community, they often brag about how much money can be made in such deals. Some sell classes detailing their techniques. In 2017, the Texas Legislature passed a law meant to protect families from exactly that playbook, but most of the over 40 heirs’ households the Land and Legacy project has spoken with since it launched at the start of the year are unaware that the law, and other avenues for keeping their home, exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The van of door knockers on a recent Thursday pulled up outside a small bungalow with half a dozen wind chimes tinkling from the front porch. A black hen and a light-colored chick\u00a0picked their way across the yard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born in this house,\u201d said Irene Rivera, a slim woman of 72 in a floral dress. She nodded when Edward Iglehart asked if it had been passed down to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where we come in,\u201d Iglehart said. He told her about an event with lawyers and probate courts staff and repair resources that would take place that Saturday. And even though she was paying taxes on the property, the fact that she wasn\u2019t on the deed opened\u00a0the door to investors trying to take it from her, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She listened, brow furrowed. She\u2019d heard about people losing their houses in that manner, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But her father had built the house himself. She and her nine siblings had grown up there, cherished memories such as her mother making menudo, and she still lived there with her sister. She gave Iglehart and his colleagues her contact information so that she could learn more.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re staying here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Irene Rivera stands on her front porch in the Kashmere Gardens area in Houston, Thursday, July 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
Brett Coomer\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Families run into issues with inherited homes<\/p>\n
The typical client story starts with the American Dream: A couple saves up to buy (or in some cases, build) a family home, which is passed down to their children.<\/p>\n
Except for a catch. The family doesn\u2019t take the property through the probate courts to officially change the names on the deed, perhaps due to a lack of know-how, a lack of resources, a history of exclusion or a lack of trust. There are reports of thousands of cases, some as recent as the \u201960s, in which disenfranchised communities, from Native Americans throughout the country to Black and Latino families in the South to low-income white families in the Appalachians, have lost their land through coercion and violence, sometimes by government officials. And it wasn\u2019t until 2015 that the state removed the necessity of paying a lawyer to change the name on a deed by filing what\u2019s known as a transfer-on-death deed.<\/p>\n
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And if a family doesn\u2019t sort that paperwork out, things only grow more complicated with each generation. State law dictates how ownership of the property gets split up, depending on whether the person on the deed is survived by a spouse and children, and failing that, by parents and siblings. There\u2019s some mathematics involved. Say the parents of 10 both pass: Each child receives a 10% share of the property. And then as those children and their spouses pass, their shares get split as well.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, those shares can be bought and sold \u2014 a bit like a share of a publicly traded company. Except these shares are not publicly traded, and what exactly does it mean to own, say,\u00a05% of a house?\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Edgar Sazo, left, Edward Iglehart and Will Harris make their way around Kashmere Gardens while talking to residents in the area they think are most at risk for losing heirship properties in Houston, Thursday, July 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
Brett Coomer\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Well, state law allows you to go to court to divide, or \u201cpartition,\u201d the property fairly so that you can have outright ownership of your 5%. But judges generally determine that the only way to do that with a home is to force a sale, often at auction, even if none of the other owners are on board. Then you\u2019ll get 5% of the proceeds, minus all the court fees.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where investors can also enter the picture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Perhaps an investor buys a share from an out-of-state relative who didn\u2019t even realize their inheritance until approached, then forces a sale.\u00a0Often, that same investor then has the highest bid at auction, while still paying far less than a property without title issues would have fetched on the open market. Then, title issues resolved, the investor can turn around and sell it for a profit.<\/p>\n
After the Civil Rights Act, an AP investigation found that property loss through intimidation declined, but sales forced by investors became far more commonplace. So many families lost inherited land that the state intervened. In 2017, Texas passed a law requiring that other heirs have the chance to buy out the person interested in selling, and that a broker attempts to sell the property at market rate before it goes to auction. But even that can be difficult for many families.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t know about it,\u201d Guidry said. \u201cA lot of attorneys don\u2019t know about it.\u201d And many investors, she said, try to buy all of the shares for less than market value without going through the courts. Sometimes they pressure family members to sell by misstating the law while threatening a suit.<\/p>\n
Which is why, at the start of this year, the Land and Legacy Project was founded in Houston. While both the Earl Carl Institute and Lone Star Legal Aid had already, for decades, been providing free legal aid to heirs trying to keep their family homes, a grant focused on improving Kashmere Gardens allowed them to team up with Collective Action for Youth to proactively reach out to families who might benefit from their services. Chase Bank also provided funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to put more boots on the ground,\u201d Guidry said.<\/p>\n
A door-to-door mission to gain trust<\/p>\n
Kashmere Gardens lies just outside of the northeastern edge of 610. Despite its proximity to the city, roosters crow and vegetable gardens flourish. It was developed right outside Houston Gardens, a New Deal-era community meant to alleviate poverty through subsistence farming. While Kashmere Gardens\u2019 lots weren\u2019t as big, its name was a nod toward a similar ethos.<\/p>\n
The neighborhood started out majority white, but in 1960, its elementary school was the first white school in the city to admit a Black student. Black families had been saving up to purchase property in the neighborhood; by that year, 71% of the neighborhood was Black, while a decade prior, 83% was white. The high school band became so well known for its brand of funk that Jamie Foxx produced a documentary about it; Rice University\u2019s first Black student was from the neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But despite well-sized lots, the neighborhood\u2019s values remain depressed. Much of it lies in the 100-year floodplain, and most homes flooded during Harvey. It is next to a railyard that has been associated with a higher incidence of cancer nearby.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On a recent Thursday, Iglehart and his colleagues, Will Harris and Edgar Sazo, met at the Kashmere Multi-Service Center dressed in fresh sneakers, matching Collective Action for Youth T-shirts and athletic shorts\u00a0\u2014 a balance between appearing professional and dressing for the weather, because, as Iglehart put it, \u201cthe heat will smother you.\u201d<\/p>\n
They piled into a well-air-conditioned truck and drove to the first home on their list\u00a0\u2014 a cream-colored house with baby blue trim and a pink rose bush in the corner of the yard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But upon their approach, a dog burst out of a plastic, igloo-shaped doghouse, snapping the chain attached to its collar taut. A man came out the front door. He eyed the matching shirts and the journalist walking behind. \u201cBeat it!\u201d he yelled over the men\u2019s attempts to explain the upcoming event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t too receptive,\u201d Iglehart said lightly, back in the van. \u201cSo we\u2019ll send him a mailer.\u201d The mailer would have more information, but he wasn\u2019t sure it would break through the wariness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Edward Iglehart, left, and Edgar Sazo talk to Keisha Carter while talking to residents in the Kashmere Gardens area they think are most at risk for losing heirship properties in Houston, Thursday, July 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
Brett Coomer\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Jennie L. Stephens, who has been working with heirs’ properties in South Carolina since the 1990s, said building trust is foundational to the work.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is such a personal issue,\u201d she said. \u201cHeirs\u2019 property is not just about law, because there\u2019s a lot of nuances that factor in. There\u2019s family dynamics, right? There is the possible loss of wealth that\u2019s involved.\u201d Stephens is now the chief executive of the Center for Heirs\u2019 Property, which was spun off from a local foundation in response to the demand for such services. She and a Ph.D. candidate reviewed the nonprofit\u2019s data over a period of more than five years and found most people had heard of their services from past clients and partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the nonprofit branches out into new communities, it first sends a team to build relationships. She evoked the image of the front porch\u00a0\u2014 creating spaces where the nonprofit can \u201c(make) sure that we\u2019re learning from the community as much as the community is learning from us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is what the Land and Legacy Project is trying to build in Kashmere Gardens. Their next stop was a sky blue house with white trim and leafy elephant ears in the yard. It was their third time paying that particular house a visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A neighbor sitting in a chair by the street watched as the men walked up to the house. Iglehart gave the woman, Keisha Carter, a flyer about the community event that weekend and offered to give her a ride if she needed one. Sazo asked about what resources she was interested in, such as a transfer-on-death deed, continuing education, training schools, jobs, home repairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you check all of them?\u201d Carter said. \u201cIn this community, we need more programs. All the homes out here are passed down.\u201d<\/p>\n
On their way out, the group chatted with the neighbor. His family was currently getting ready to go to court over an heirs’\u00a0property dispute, in which one family member wanted to sell, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edgar Sazo, left, and Edward Iglehart talk to Irene Rivera while talking to residents in the Kashmere Gardens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-395335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}