Church sales ‘exploding’ as religious affiliation fades

by Jonanthan Pitts

BALTIMORE — When the Archdiocese of Baltimore sold two buildings that belonged to one of its parishes in April, the move didn’t just signal a new chapter in the church’s plan to realign its operations in the city. It reflected an emerging trend in real estate that shows no signs of abating.

America’s oldest Catholic diocese sold one administration and one school building at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Bolton Hill to a charter school in April. It marked the first time the archdiocese had sold properties as part of Seek the City to Come, the consolidation plan by which it slashed the number of parishes in, and near, the city from 61 to 23 last year.

With commitment to organized religion still in decline in the United States, the transaction was no rarity.

About 4,500 of the country’s 350,000 Christian congregations close every year, while roughly  3,000 open, according to Lifeway Research, a nonprofit that tracks patterns in the church. An estimated 100,000 are expected to be shuttered within a generation. The trend is making countless religious buildings obsolete. And faith leaders are increasingly faced with the question of what to do with them.

Thousands have already been sold and converted to other uses in the U.S. and beyond. Buyers enamored of such unique design elements as vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows and historic charm are turning former houses of worship into community centers, condominium complexes, restaurants, and private homes.

An hour’s drive around Baltimore alone yields glimpses of a 19th-Century Presbyterian church building that became a vintage clothing store (Hunting Ground in Hampden, now closed); an Evangelical Lutheran church erected in 1906 that is now a boutique apartment community (The Hamlet Lofts, Highlandtown); a Catholic church dating to 1889 that is now a yoga studio (Sanctuary Body, Fells Point), and perhaps most famously, a former Catholic church that developers turned into a brewpub and restaurant (the Ministry of Brewing, Upper Fells Point).

“I don’t believe God is going away or leaving us, or even that people don’t want spiritual depth,” said the Rev. Mark Elsdon, the editor of “Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition,” a book on the phenomenon published last year. “But they don’t do it by showing up in large numbers on Sunday and putting money in the plate like they did in the 1950s. It’s a time of change in Americans’ spiritual lives, and it’s showing up as a significant sector of the real estate market.”

The Ministry of Brewing, the former site of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, is a family-style brewpub that opened in Jan. 2020. Areas where the Stations of the Cross were once displayed are along the walls. Part of the brew house is where the side altar once stood. (Kim Hairston/Staff)
The Ministry of Brewing, the former site of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, is a family-style brewpub that opened in Jan. 2020. Areas where the Stations of the Cross were once displayed are along the walls. Part of the brew house is where the side altar once stood. (Kim Hairston/Staff)

A significant moment

A few faith traditions can claim to be growing in the U.S. Muslims, Orthodox Jews and conservative Christian denominations such as the Presbyterian Church of America and the Anglican Church in North America are experiencing gains.

But the overall arrow still points downward. The number of Americans who identify as Christians fell from 72% to 66% over the past ten years, a loss of about 15 million adults. As of 2020, more than 100 million Americans said they had no religious affiliation, a 97% plunge since 2010.

And even Americans who call themselves religious are worshipping in churches and synagogues less often. The trend away from physical buildings spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, when bans on public gatherings prompted faith leaders to create remote services.

About 27% of religious Americans were still attending church online remotely as of 2023, according to Pew Research Center.

That and other factors, including soaring maintenance costs, are forcing faith leaders to confront a crucial question: how importantare the buildings where we once worshipped?

“More and more people are coming to the conclusion, ‘a church is not a building; it’s the people in the congregation,’” said Stephen Ferrandi, co-owner of PraiseBuildings Religious Property Brokerage, one of the most active firms in the mid-Atlantic for religious real estate transactions.

Elsdon is the co-founder of RootedGood, a Wisconsin nonprofit that supports faith-based leaders who are interested in developing properties for broad community use.

“I think it’s a very significant social moment,” Elsdon said. “If we don’t realize it and act now, we’re going to wake up 20 years from now and say, ‘Where are the community centers? Where’s the affordable housing? We had them. They were called churches.”

The Ministry of Brewing, the former site of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, is a family-style brewpub that opened in Jan. 2020. Areas where the Stations of the Cross were once displayed are along the walls. (Kim Hairston/Staff)
The Ministry of Brewing, the former site of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, is a family-style brewpub that opened in Jan. 2020. Areas where the Stations of the Cross were once displayed are along the walls. (Kim Hairston/Staff)

Where the market is

Ferrandi saw a movement taking shape years ago. He was with a commercial firm in the 1990s when he says he began meeting religious leaders in search of land for new churches.

He soon began mastering the peculiarities of the niche houses-of-worship market — owners who are sad to sell, zoning and landmark issues, parking-lot possibilities, the question of how to adapt church-shaped structures to new uses.

In 2015, he and a partner, Barbara Brindon, established Praise Buildings, one of several subsidiaries of the EA Commercial Real Estate, the firm they run in Ellicott City.

Praise Buildings has brokered 78 religious property transactions in the region in 10 years, a number Ferrandi calls “jaw-dropping.” Sixteen were valued at more than $900,000. (The priciest was the sale of Rainbow Hall, a former residence of General Douglas MacArthur and a onetime Baptist home, to Bais Medrash, an Owings Mills synagogue, for $4.2 million.)

“The last three or four years, the church brokerage accounts for about 75 percent of our revenue,” Ferrandi said. “It’s unheard of, but that’s where the market is. The church market is exploding.”

And that’s not only in Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., the jurisdictions EA Commercial serves.

LoopNet, an online marketplace for commercial real estate, currently shows more than 1,200 churches or religious facility properties for sale in 48 states, with 365 listed at $1 million or more. CityFeet.com, another online marketplace, lists 35 such properties for sale in Maryland. LoopNet lists 15 in Baltimore.

The costliest in the state — a 130,000-square-foot building in Silver Spring that once housed a seminary — is listed at $28,000,000; the most affordable is a former Evangelical Lutheran church in Sharpsburg that was built in 1942 and renovated in 2020 ($325,000).

The realtors for both suggest they’re ideal for business purposes.

Exterior of The Hamlet Lofts, a "boutique apartment community" at 3127 E. Baltimore Street in Highlandtown. (Kim Hairston/Staff)
Exterior of The Hamlet Lofts, a “boutique apartment community” at 3127 E. Baltimore Street in Highlandtown. (Kim Hairston/Staff)

Sanctuary

It’s hard to know whether any single denomination has been selling more than others, but Ferrandi says he has represented Episcopalians, United Methodists, Catholics and more in roughly equal measure, with mainline Protestant denominations generally in the lead.

Perhaps because it has clear canonical regulations around the dispensation of buildings, the Catholic Church keeps better records than most.

The Baltimore archdiocese has closed 30 churches over the past 90 years, according to its website. Twelve that became churches in other denominations are still in use.

But with attendance still declining across traditions, Elsdon says the trend of churches buying churches is becoming less feasible. That has proven the case in Baltimore, where more former houses of worship are being turned to commercial or private use.

Hampden Presbyterian Church, a sturdy granite structure built on Falls Road in the 1870s, housed a congregation whose membership foundered a century later. New owners bought the place in 2011, returned it to its original footprint, and reopened it as the Hunting Ground boutique. It closed in 2024 after 13 years.

St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church on South Ann Street, established in the 1880s, served as the religious and social hub of the Polish community in Fells Point for more than a century. After it was closed in 2000, new owners renovated the Romanesque brick building, preserving its interior arches, much of its stained glass, and paintings of saints. The details enhance the zenlike, light-filled decor of Sanctuary Body, which opened to fitness enthusiasts in 2013.

Ernst Valery and his business partner, David Wendell, had a similar plan in mind when they bought the former St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church in 2011.

Built in the 1850s to serve the city’s German population, St. Michael’s included a rectory, two school buildings, a convent, and a brothers’ residence in its complex at Lombard and Wolfe streets in Butchers Hill.

Valery, a real estate developer who specializes in adaptive reuse, lived nearby at the time. He remembers lamenting the absence of a space where families could gather.

He and Wendell bought the property in part because it had served just such a purpose for generations. They retained its most striking church-specific elements to help preserve its profile as a sanctuary, if a nonreligious one.

Some have questioned their pairing of sacred and secular, Valery says — the former altar itself holds steel vats for beer production — but its previous owner, the fathers of the Redemptorist order, decided the plan was in keeping with their charism, which involves reaching out to those who feel alienated from the church and society.

That made it an acceptable “profane,” or secular, use of the property, not the “sordid” use barred by canon law.

To Valery, the Ministry of Brewing is a place where people can connect, play board games, and enjoy each other’s company in an unhurried environment.

“It’s a place where community is built, which is the original intent of the church,” the self-described lapsed Catholic said. “We think of it as the neighborhood den.”

The Ministry of Brewing, the former site of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, is a family-style 250-seat brewpub that opened in Jan. 2020. Many of the elements from the church have been retained. (Kim Hairston/Staff)
The Ministry of Brewing, the former site of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, is a family-style 250-seat brewpub that opened in Jan. 2020. Many of the elements from the church have been retained. (Kim Hairston/Staff)

Properties for sale

The Archdiocese of Baltimore consulted with parishioners, held town halls and worked with consultants to determine how best to shrink its footprint in Baltimore as part of Seek the City. The final version, released in March 2024, called for eliminating 38 parishes.

Most ceased offering Sunday mass in December and remain open only for special sacraments.

Archdiocese spokesman Christian Kendzierski said church leaders will decide the buildings’ fates over time. Proceeds from all sales will go to the newly formed parish to which each belongs.

The sale of the Corpus Christi buildings, which netted $1.93 million, is the only one completed so far, but the archdiocese says five parishes and another building are on the market. Each one listed is valued at more than $1.3 million. LoopNet lists a seventh at $438,000.

With Seek the City’s final phase under way, Kendzierski said, the archdiocese is “negotiating sales with interested parties.” Potential buyers include religious organizations and charter schools. And that’s in keeping with what most religious sellers hope.

“These properties have been beneficial for the surrounding communities,” he said. “We want them to stay that way.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jonathan M. Pitts at jonpitts@baltsun.com.

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