Frozen wealth

Your parents didn't buy the house as an investment. They bought it simply because they needed a place to live, because they could afford the mortgage on an income, because there were good schools nearby, and because everyone else was doing it. They painted the living room twice, argued for years about the kitchen renovation, but never really renovated it. They raised their children here and will spend their retirement here. Unwittingly, they built the most valuable asset of their lives. Now they are struggling to pay medical bills, and the house is worth $1.2 million. A figure that has been repeatedly appearing in recent financial research is: $124 trillion. This is the total amount of assets projected to be transferred from the older generation to the younger generation over the next 25 years. Analysts call it the "Great Wealth Transfer." Media coverage of this seems entirely positive, especially for those receiving the transferred assets. Is that really the case? Much of the transferred wealth lacked liquidity, and the majority of it was real estate. The baby boomers bought homes when prices were reasonable, paid off their loans over decades, and watched as property appreciation became a major source of their wealth. The generation that inherited these properties, however, watched helplessly as the same prices became unaffordable for them. Today, these properties still end up in their hands, but they lack liquidity, carry heavy emotional burdens, involve cumbersome legal procedures, and are increasingly difficult to use practically. This is the problem that the $124 trillion figure in the headline fails to reflect. To understand why this is so important, we must understand how the housing sector has changed since the 1960s. The nature of housing has transformed. Initially, housing was simply a place to shelter from the elements; it has gradually evolved into a primary financial instrument for the American middle class. For families with incomes below the highest income level, housing is no longer just one of many assets, but the most important one. Real estate equity is the largest single expenditure on American household balance sheets, far exceeding the sum of retirement accounts, stocks, and all other assets. The baby boomers amassed their wealth through this asset in conditions that no longer exist. When they bought their homes, the price-to-income ratio was between 2 and 3.5. Over the next few decades, they paid off their mortgages as real wages increased. By the first quarter of 2025, baby boomers' real estate holdings had reached $19.5 trillion, a fraction of what they were in 1990.

Millennials entering the housing market today face a situation where house prices are more than double what their parents paid for their homes. They are burdened with student loans their parents didn't have. The mortgage rates they face make monthly payments on median-priced homes almost unaffordable for middle-income earners. The down payment alone, coupled with house prices rising far faster than savings accumulation, creates a natural trap.

• Segmentation: When four siblings inherit a property, tokenization technology allows each person to hold their exact share digitally, which can be traded, sold, or held independently without needing to agree on how to dispose of the physical asset. When ownership is programmable, current legal disputes arising from inheritance will be greatly simplified.

• Mobility: Tokenized assets can be included in portfolios alongside stocks, cryptocurrencies, and other assets. They can be managed remotely, transferred across borders, and ultimately used as collateral for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Geographical restrictions on real estate no longer limit the financial flexibility of heirs.

• Accessibility: For heirs who cannot afford to purchase property but are about to inherit it, tokenization allows them to participate partially. For younger siblings inheriting smaller shares, partial ownership allows them to hold physical assets instead of immediately liquidating their share.

The market has already moved in this direction. As of early 2026, the total value of tokenized real-world assets had reached $26 billion in distributed assets and $388 billion in representative assets, and is still growing rapidly.

The market has already moved in this direction. As of early 2026, the total value of tokenized real-world assets had reached $26 billion in distributed assets and $388 billion in representative assets, and is still growing rapidly.

Real estate still represents only a small fraction of the market, but the infrastructure being built—such as wallets, on-chain settlement, and programmable ownership—is already at a level unattainable two years ago. Svanevik points out that the products Nansen is developing today would have been impossible two years ago because the infrastructure wasn't mature enough. But that has changed. This doesn't mean tokenization will solve the housing affordability crisis. House prices won't fall simply because ownership is easier to transfer. Structural problems in the market, such as supply constraints, locked-in interest rates, and the long-term decoupling of house prices from wages, remain. We also don't know whether financializing the last illiquid asset owned by most households will improve their lives or simply make their problems easier to transfer. Tokenization addresses a more specific and pressing issue. It concerns what happens when $25 trillion in real estate wealth changes hands between two generations: one generation invests all their wealth in real estate, while the other views wealth as fluid, digital, and not necessarily tied to a physical address. For most homeowners with home equity, existing home equity withdrawal tools are impractical. Cashing out and refinancing requires giving up a 3% mortgage rate in exchange for a 7% rate. Home equity lines of credit (HELOC) and home equity loans both require income eligibility, which retirees often struggle to meet. Reverse mortgages carry a 30-year stigma and create complex inheritance issues. Selling a home triggers both tax traps and interest rate resets. Each option carries losses that holders cannot afford. Wealth transfers have already begun, amounting to approximately $1.5 trillion annually, and are accelerating. The first millennials will turn 45 in 2026. JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Franklin Templeton have all ventured into the tokenized asset space over the past two years, building the infrastructure for this moment. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenef wrote last year that this wealth transfer is accompanied by technological change and will be crucial in the coming years. The generation inheriting this wealth is accustomed to keeping financial assets in their wallets, not in filing cabinets. The real question is how they will cope with the current system that relies on paper documents and broker-driven transactions. Each generation accumulates wealth using its own familiar language. The next generation then needs to translate it into another language.