From Katy Perry to Senior Living: Why America’s Convents Have Become Prized Real Estate

• US nuns fell from 181,000 in 1966 to fewer than 50,000 by 2014
• Katy Perry bought an eight-acre Los Angeles convent for $14.5 million in 2016
• A Buffalo convent sold for $75,000 in 2017 for proposed senior living
• A New Jersey convent site was proposed for 111 multifamily units

As America’s religious orders age and shrink, their convents are coming onto the property market. The Real Deal reported in May 2023 on a wave of convent conversions that has turned former homes of nuns into condos, senior housing and even a celebrity residence.

The numbers behind the trend are stark: the number of nuns in the United States fell from 181,000 in 1966 to fewer than 50,000 by 2014. Dr Mark M. Gray of Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate said: “In 2014, only 1 percent of nuns in the U.S. were under the age of 40.” He added: “There were just 84 new nuns in the U.S. in 2021.”

The deals vary widely. In Wilmette, near Chicago, a 180,000-square-foot former convent of the Sisters of Christian Charity became luxury condominiums. In Tuxedo Park, New York, Alex and Sue Glasscock bought the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate estate, 140 acres with a 40,000-square-foot mansion, for $11 million. In Buffalo, Natale Development bought a former Sisters of Mercy convent for $75,000 in 2017 and proposed senior living. In Mendham, New Jersey, Accordia Realty Ventures proposed 111 multifamily units at a Sisters of Christian Charity convent.

Some sales served the public. The Bayport and Blue Point communities on Long Island bought the St Ursula Center for $3.7 million in 2019 and turned it into a library. In Los Feliz, Los Angeles, the singer Katy Perry bought the eight-acre convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for $14.5 million in 2016. In Newton, Massachusetts, the Missionary Franciscan Sisters were selling property that housed a convent and Mount Alvernia High School.

For orders with ageing members, these sales fund care and retirement. For buyers, convents offer large, solid buildings on generous land. For communities, the question is whether that land becomes homes for many or privileges for a few.

Jamaica’s religious orders and congregations hold convents, retreat houses and mission properties of their own. The American experience suggests that as numbers decline, careful planning matters: an order that decides early what should happen to its land can steer it towards housing or community use rather than simply the highest bid.

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