Church Sale

Developer Shimshon Grunstein bought East Harlem’s 124-year-old Church of St Paul and Holy Rosary for $5 million, planning 88 homes after earlier deals collapsed over repair costs, one estimated at $44 million.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne told Victoria’s Yoorrook truth-telling inquiry its church buildings are insured for $3.3 billion across 350 sites, as commissioners asked about colonial land grants and sharing sale proceeds with Traditional Owners.

A diocese in northern France has listed Saint-Edouard’s Church in Lens, built in 1899 for miners, at €362,500, saying rising maintenance and falling use made it a burden, while the town hall wants a cultural centre.

The Diocese of Truro is selling Penzance’s Grade II* listed Old Vicarage, built in 1701 and last marketed in 1896, at a guide above £850,000, saying grand clergy houses no longer suit modern parish ministry.

The bankrupt Archdiocese of New Orleans sold a seminary-area lot, a clergy retreat house and a former homeless services centre for $2.3 million to help fund a settlement with clergy abuse survivors.

A former Free Gospel church near Atlanta’s Beltline, sold to developer CDW Partners for $800,000 in 2021, is being converted into six rental apartments while the congregation relocated to Lakewood.

After its building collapsed, a New London congregation passed the site and its debts, including a $250,000 city lien, to a housing group planning apartments, and is buying another church building for $1.

A Reuters report republished by Premier in 2024 looked at US congregations turning property into housing, led by Arlington Presbyterian Church, which sold its historic building for the 173-unit Gilliam Place while keeping space for worship.

A Michigan school district has bought the Lutheran church next to its high school for $950,000 to house programmes for young adults with disabilities and its robotics team, with the congregation leasing back until 2025.

Washington, DC has lost about a third of its houses of worship since 2008, as congregations sell to developers and follow members to the suburbs. Mount Bethel Baptist Church sold for $5.7 million and moved to Forestville.

Mount Ephraim Baptist Church has sold about 6.5 acres near Atlanta’s Westside BeltLine trail, where developers plan 300 apartments, including 46 affordable units, and 53 townhomes, while the church plans to relocate.

Ireland’s High Court has rejected most of a residents’ challenge to 232 homes on former Carmelite convent lands in Delgany, Co Wicklow, which the nuns sold for €15 million in 2019, while keeping construction frozen pending a wildlife issue.

The Uniting Church has sold a 4,882-square-metre residential-zoned site in North Melbourne, held for 170 years and home to a church with a 46-metre spire, after 217 parties expressed interest in buying it.

Honolulu’s Central Union Church, facing falling donations, lost wedding income and rising repair bills, has voted by about two to one to allow long-term ground leases or sales of parts of its eight-acre site on South Beretania Street.

The Church of Scotland had more than 40 churches, manses and offices on the market or under offer, worth over £7.5 million, as falling congregations pushed it to shrink an estate that has already fallen from over 5,000 properties to about 3,600.