More than 9 million acres of land across the U.S.—roughly the size of Maryland and Delaware combined—are held as heirs' property, a form of inherited property ownership in which descendants hold an interest in property without a clear legal title. Families who inherit property this way may lack the documentation needed to sell, finance, insure, or improve the property. They can also face housing instability and barriers to using their homes or land as a source of wealth.
Heirs' property has often been studied for its effects on owners themselves. Less understood is how its presence may shape surrounding neighborhoods.
This question is central to research by Ford School student Jasmine Simington, whose paper, "Heirs' Property, Housing Wealth, and the Spillover Effects of Marginalized Legal Classifications," won the 2026 Eckstein Prize.
"Jasmine's paper is extremely compelling," said Alex Ralph, teaching professor at the Ford School and chair of the Eckstein Prize selection committee. "The committee was impressed by her analysis and her historical lens. Moreover, Jasmine has written with clarity and purpose. Her paper is an excellent read, and she's a most deserving recipient of this year's Eckstein Prize."
Simington, who is pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Sociology, examined the spillover effects of heirs' property by blending scholarship from legal history, law, housing economics, and sociology. Her research uses a hedonic pricing model, an approach commonly used in economics, to estimate how proximity to heirs' property is associated with the sale prices of nearby non-heirs' properties.
The study suggests that the consequences of heirs' property may extend beyond the families who hold unclear title. Simington writes, "Shifting from an understanding of heirs' property from an individual legal problem to a neighborhood-level social condition is therefore critical for policy responses to the challenges of heirs' property, as well as an important avenue for future research on the topic."
By examining how a marginalized legal classification can affect neighboring properties, Simington's work contributes to broader sociological debates about how law shapes inequality for those connected through place.
Research has shown that heirs' property is especially common in southern Black communities. Scholars also note that it can arise wherever people face barriers to legal assistance during property transfers, including urban Black neighborhoods, towns along the U.S.-Mexico border, Tribal lands, and low-income areas of Appalachia.
About the Eckstein Prize
The Peter Eckstein Prize for Interdisciplinary Research and Policy Analysis is awarded to a Ford School student or group of students whose work exhibits the use of theories, concepts, frameworks, research methods, or other tools from two or more disciplines in researching, analyzing, or furthering understanding of a public policy issue or debate, domestic or international.
The prize was established in 2019 by a gift from Peter Eckstein (LSA ‘59), a student of both economics and social sciences. Throughout his career, Eckstein saw the value in combining the two fields to explain economic phenomena.
