Owning a home remains a path to wealth, but Black homeowners need to safeguard their future
Many of the world’s millionaires reside in the United States, with much of their wealth coming from property ownership.
According to a new report by UBS, the world’s largest private bank, strong financial markets in the United States in 2024 boosted the number of millionaires in this country. Data from UBS’s recently released “Global Wealth Report” shows that financial power increased for individuals by 4.6% in 2024.
Of all the world’s regions, wealth grew in the Americas the most, and predominantly in North America: “The world’s USD [United States dollar] millionaires own nearly half of the entire personal wealth identified in our sample,” the UBS report states, “and North America is their main host: four out of 10 millionaires are based there, a significantly higher number than in any other region.”
The UBS study also points to the growing number of Everyday MILLIonaires (EMILLIs), many of whom have grown wealthy because of property ownership. The U.S. dollar’s high exchange rate has boosted the value of U.S. homes, and as properties are purchased or even inherited, more and more U.S. homeowners are becoming millionaires. Over a thousand EMILLIs are created every day in the U.S., UBS asserts.
Many EMILLIs are female: they are women who inherit wealth from their parents or, since they tend to live longer than men, from their husbands.
Because Black wealth in the U.S. relies heavily on homeownership, retaining property ownership is crucial for building wealth in Black families. But the Amsterdam News has consistently been contacted by homeowners who have been victimized by deed theft and predatory lending schemes.
Vulnerable owners
Wealth distribution varies by race in the U.S.: the Federal Reserve has found that the wealth of white people is diversified among an almost equal amount of mutual funds, stocks, and real estate, while Blacks, Latinos, and Asians tend to have their wealth rooted in property.
This highlights how different groups build and hold their wealth in the United States. Maintaining wealth has to be planned, representatives of TD Bank told the AmNews.
Paige Carlson-Heim, the head of U.S. Social Impact at TD Bank, pointed to a recent report from New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, which calls on city agencies and non-profits to identify neighborhoods where owners could be vulnerable to losing their homes. Eighty-eight percent of “at-risk” and “higher risk” properties are in rapidly gentrifying Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods.
“We see this phenomenon increasingly facing our communities where TD has the privilege to serve customers from Maine to Florida,” Carlson-Heim said. “As we know, owning a home is one of the keys to building generational wealth. And what we see increasingly are situations where people have inherited property, maybe they’ve lived in the same house their whole life, their parents or guardians are deceased, but their names are not on the title. That threatens their ability to maintain home ownership successfully, because if their name is not on the title, they can’t borrow to make improvements to the property. There are risks of tax foreclosure and many other things. And so, we have been engaging with community groups across our footprint to help support the effort to change the situation and ensure that people who’ve been in their homes can remain in their homes and leverage them for generational wealth.”
Financial education is seldom taught in the United States, and usually, only those in financial professions are taught how to preserve their wealth. But with more women inheriting and even earning their way to EMILLI status, there’s a greater need for them to understand how their money works and ways to keep it in the family.
Estate planning
Most families neglect estate planning, which involves drafting wills, establishing family trusts, and preparing other legal documents to specify the management of assets and affairs during a person’s lifetime and after their death.
“Many clients have said, if someone has passed away, ‘Oh, I get the house automatically,’” notes Donna Walton, the Wealth Strategist vice president at TD Wealth. “Sometimes it passes to them because it’s jointly owned with right of survivorship, but they don’t think they need to go to probate; they don’t think they need to do anything formally. And they don’t think that if it does go to them that they need to rerecord the deed.
“They go, ‘Oh, that’s just how it works: my mom died, there’s the two of us, right? Or I’m the only child, so, therefore, I automatically inherit; that’s just the way it is.’ And they never pass that deed on or change that deed to themselves or do the court process. For some people, it’s just not having access to attorneys or the ability to afford attorneys. You know, oftentimes with some of our clients, they just don’t want to, and you have to explain to them the problem of not doing that. But they just don’t necessarily understand. Then when that child, that document, that house is never in their name, and they’re still living there, like Paige mentioned, you can’t get loans, you can’t do all of those things, and now you are beginning to get generations of people who have never ever done the appropriate legal process.”
Reaching out to a legal representative for estate planning can be challenging for Black homeowners, especially those who have in the past had to deal with racial disparities in home financing and when trying to gain legal support. But as more Black homeowners achieve EMILLI status, more services should become available to them.
TD Bank has been working in partnership with the nonprofit NeighborWorks America to sponsor day-long estate planning workshops that also provide free legal services. Workshops will be planned for the New York City area, but TD suggests that anyone interested in talking with local organizations about estate planning can contact the following:
- NYC Council: Emre Edev eedev@council.nyc.gov; lskrzypiec@council.nyc.gov
- Legal Services: Casey Lee CLee@legal-aid.org; Emily Corcione ecorcione@lsnyc.org
- Fifth Avenue Committee (a NeighborWorks organization): Anthony Coker acoker@fifthave.org
- NHSNYC (a NeighborWorks organization): Tonya Ores tonya_ores@nhsnyc.org
- Center for NYC Neighborhoods (a TD partner): Scott Kohanowski scott.kohanowski@cnycn.org
