Great Wealth Transfer by State: 10 States Account for Nearly 60%

For every dollar expected to change hands in the Great Wealth Transfer, 59 cents is tied to older homeowners in just 10 states, according to a new analysis.

The shocking figures raise the prospect that decades of geographically erratic housing gains are about to passed on to the next generation.

The study, released last week from LendingTree, estimates that homeowners already 65 or older could transfer about $17.2 trillion between 2026 and 2045. Of that, $10.2 trillion (59%) is concentrated in California, Florida, New York, Texas, Washington, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona.

But no where is the divide more clear than in the Golden State. LendingTree estimates that California alone is home to nearly $3.4 trillion in transferable wealth—nearly $1 of every $5 nationally, and more than Florida and New York combined.

“Home value appreciation has been wildly uneven by geography over the past 30-plus years,” says Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com®. “And this data shows that unevenness is about to get inherited, not just lived in.”

Where your parents bought could shape what you inherit

There are several different ways to look at the geography of that inheritance. The first is to is simply look at the places where the most wealth is expected to originate.

By this measure, California leads because it combines a huge population of older homeowners with extraordinarily valuable real estate. LendingTree counts about 2.7 million California homeowners age 65 or older and calculates an average home value of nearly $982,000 among them.

Florida gets to the second place spot somewhat differently. It has nearly as many older homeowners—about 2.5 million—but their average home value is much lower, at roughly $504,000. Texas, meanwhile, has more than 2 million older homeowners with an average home value of about $360,000.

We can see here that the metric tips the scales toward large populations with at or above the nationally median-priced home. But if we look at how much wealth is associated with each homeowner household, we get a much different picture.

On that measure, Hawaii comes out on top.

LendingTree models about $3.1 million in transferable wealth per older homeowner household in Hawaii, followed by $2.9 million in California, and $2.8 million in Washington, D.C., while West Virginia comes in at the other end of the spectrum with about $592,000, followed by Mississippi at $622,000, and Arkansas at $692,000.

But Jones cautions against putting too much stock in those dollar amounts.

“These projections rely on chained assumptions over a 20-year horizon, and small changes in any one assumption compound significantly over two decades,” she says. “I’d treat the geographic pattern as the durable finding and the dollar figures as a reasonable-but-fragile estimate.”

The wealth is concentrated, but the expectations are widespread

The geographic concentration becomes more consequential when set against how many Americans already expect inherited money to become part of their financial lives.

“There’s a lot of money expected to change hands over the next 20 years, but expectations don’t always match reality,” says Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief consumer finance analyst. 

One-third (33%) of Americans younger than 65 told LendingTree they expect to receive an inheritance or financial gift. For those earning at least $100,000, the expectation rises to 53%.

And nearly half (43%) say their retirement planning depends a great deal on their expected inheritance, while just 25% say the prospect of one hasn’t affected their planning whatsoever.

“Many Americans are counting on an inheritance to help fund retirement, even though relatively few older Americans say they plan to leave one. That’s a risky gap,” Schulz adds.

To his point, just 43% of Americans 65 and older told LendingTree they plan to give an inheritance or financial gift.

Families don’t appear to be talking through those discrepancies, either. Among people expecting an inheritance, 57% say they have clearly discussed it with the person they expect to receive it from. Another 16% have not discussed it at all.

“An inheritance can be a wonderful financial boost, but it shouldn’t be treated as a guarantee,” says Schulz. “Honest conversations now can help families avoid confusion, disappointment, and difficult decisions later.”

That wealth can become a homebuying advantage

Those honest conversations may be particularly important because an inheritance has never been more powerful.

Households receiving an inheritance of at least $5,000 are about 2.5 times as likely to become homeowners as those that do not, according to previous research from Realtor.com. Among Black and Hispanic households, the difference is even larger.

That cash can become a down payment, allow a buyer to borrow less, or get someone into the housing market years sooner. And in today’s market, Jones says, those advantages have become substantially more valuable than they were a decade ago for two compounding reasons.

“With mortgage rates well off their pandemic-era lows, a cash inheritance that lets a buyer put more down, or skip financing altogether, directly avoids tens of thousands of dollars in interest that a buyer without that cushion has to pay,” she explains.

Then there is the upfront hurdle.

“The down payment itself has become the binding constraint in a lot of markets,” Jones says. In 2025, 22% of first-time buyers used a gift or loan from a relative or friend for their down payment.

Jones adds that a lump sum “can be the difference between buying now and buying years later, while still renting and missing out on appreciation.”

That can create a reinforcing cycle that is already visible today. Children raised in homeowner households are 18.4 percentage points more likely to become homeowners by age 35; and buying your first home by age 30 is associated with a 22.5% ($119,000) higher net worth at 50.

In Jones’ words, “Inherited wealth increasingly determines who gets to buy and when.”

The money may matter most when it moves

There is still one more geography to consider: where the inheritance is ultimately spent.

“A Californian’s inheritance deployed in a lower-cost market is a much bigger relative advantage than the same dollar figure suggests on its face,” Jones says. “So the ‘losers’ aren’t just people in low-appreciation states, they’re specifically people in low-appreciation states with no family wealth to inherit, competing against transplants who bring outsized inheritances with them.”

Consider two homebuyers in a low-cost market. A local buyer saving from wages could find themselves competing against someone whose down payment was generated by a housing boom hundreds or thousands of miles away.

It’s another version of the remote-work era boom, when higher-income workers carried purchasing power from expensive areas into cheaper ones.

That could make the Great Wealth Transfer a transfer not only between generations, but between housing markets.

Again, though, Jones cautions against treating all of the projected wealth as guaranteed. What ultimately gets passed down will depend partly on the economic environment that precedes the transfer.

“The bigger wild card is policy,” Jones says. “Changes to estate tax thresholds, capital gains treatment on inherited property, or long-term care costs eating into estates before they’re ever passed down are the biggest unknown.”