CLEVELAND — A single mother just changed the life of not only her son, but his future children down the line.
"My thing is what do you want to pass along to your kids when you leave. I'm not about to pass along a bunch of bills," Charlise Freeman said.
Freeman passed along three homes for her son Taurean Thomas' 16th birthday.
All of the homes are rental properties that are already occupied and generating revenue.
"The purpose of me giving them to him so young is so I can teach him and hopefully by the time he is fully ready, I can let him go, but this is something that we can do together," Freeman said.
Freeman said her son has already been interested in real estate, so she turned it into something tangible.
She also gifted him $10,000 as an investment to renovate one of the properties.
"I want to keep doing real estate and then have another business, so I feel like everyone will see that I'm hardworking," Thomas said.
According to a Forbes report, the U.S. Black homeownership rate in the first quarter of 2021 was just 45.1% compared to nearly 74% for non-Hispanic white households.
With that in mind, Freeman is passing down the ingredients of success and generational wealth.
"I want to either pass the business down to my brother or pass the business down to my children and my brother's children can go into business together," Thomas said.
"It all goes back to being able to leave him something that in the end of the day was always going to produce some type of income," Freeman said.
This story was first reported by DeLaun Dillard at WEWS in Cleveland, Ohio.
