Maybe a tax dodge. Rental income from the house or capital gain from its resale will be taxed at her no-other-income bracket rather that at dad's presumably higher one.
Very interesting, because half a world away, in the Mediterranean, clay was ingested as an antidote to poisoning ("terra sigillata"), and in modern times in the southern United States the folk habit of clay eating results in mineral (zinc) deficiencies because the metal ions become bound to the clay as it passes through the gut.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/comments/9y3mov/maps_almost_without_australia/
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dispatches-1918