Home prices are up. For Black families, is selling Grandma's house the right choice?

To Fred Brown, the sale of his grandmother's house was a big mistake.

That's the home where he grew up with his grandmother, parents and four siblings in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His grandmother bought the house in 1960 for under $7,000.

After she died, Brown says his father wanted his aunts to help pay the taxes on the house. "I guess they didn't want to pay it, so they had a big dispute. And you know, they just wind up selling it," he says.

The house was sold in 2015, and its new owner renovated it and split it into two units, selling each for more than Brown's family had made on the whole thing.

Brown, 26, now stays with friends while he applies for jobs, and his parents are renters in nearby Maryland.

"The values of houses is going up in D.C.," he says. "They could have just ... invested in the future instead of just worrying about the present."

To sell or not to sell

For most American families, home equity is their largest asset. And homeowners are much wealthier than renters: Americans who owned homes in 2019 had a median net worth of $255,000 — more than 40 times the median net worth of renters.

Now, in much of the U.S. can raise a big question: To sell or