What goes through your mind when you see a for sale sign in front of a church?
Opportunity?
With Catholic diocese in financial trouble, parishes are being consolidated and some diocese are even dealing with foreclosures.
Reuters recently reported that the Catholic Church spent $7.3 billion a year in the late 1990s on construction projects. Those expenditures put the church on the meniscus of the real estate bubble.
These days, a church property can be had for a relative bargain. Still, it’s a strange thing to consider if you’re shopping for a home.
So, who buys them? Area real estate brokers are hard-pressed to explain.
Family Home
“You’re primarily looking to create residential there, and they seem to pop up periodically,” said Leif Rosseland, a broker with Coldwell Banker in Shrewsbury.
Rosseland said many churches are large enough to be converted into multi-unit housing, like condos or apartments. But getting them to that point presents a real challenge.
“Some of these churches are not in the greatest condition, and they have to be retrofitted with plumbing to develop them, so for the fundamentals to work, they have to go for a pretty good price. If you’re buying it for a buck, that’s a different story.”
When the time, money and effort are put into church redevelopment projects, though, the result can be “a spectacular looking building,” Rosseland said.
One example is the office of Acton-based architect Michael Rosenfeld.
The office is in a converted church on Massachusetts Avenue in West Acton.
The property is large enough to house an affiliated construction firm, Thoughtforms Corp., in a renovated barn on the property.
One church property currently on the market is at 209 Lawrence St. in Gardner. The 6,650-square-foot church is on the market for $249,000.
Other houses of worship also end up for sale, as well. Take the synagogue at 835 Pleasant St. in Worcester. It’s 12,500 square feet and is on the market for $486,000. While up for sale, the building is still used for weekly services.
Joseph Sama of Gold Triangle Realty in Shrewsbury said the number of Catholic churches on the market is likely to increase in coming years. But that doesn’t mean a costly and complicated refurbishment for all new owners.
“St. Margaret Mary sold last year and another denomination bought it,” Sama said. “Obviously, it wasn’t another Catholic parish.”
Around the region, Notre Dame and St. Catherin of Sweden, both in Worcester, have closed, leaving them vacant.
Churches in Fitchburg and Clinton are also scheduled to close, according to Sama, who handles sales for area parishes.
Because of the difficulty in redeveloping the structures, Sama said he tends to see church sales as land deals.
It’s difficult to guess what will happen to churches that close in Central Massachusetts, though, because it’s still a relatively new phenomenon here.
“If I were a contractor, and the situation was right, I might raze the buildings and do housing or new residential, but this is so new, especially in Worcester,” Sama said.
Based on Worcester’s previous experience, the commercial viability of church properties may be best protected when their historical significance is not.
The Mission Chapel in Worcester’s Washington Square neighborhood has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980, but it sits vacant today because of it.
It has attracted interest from St. Vincent Hospital and restaurateurs, but none have been able to put a project together that can satisfy the variety of historic deed restrictions on the property.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly characterized the synagogue on Pleasant Street as no longer in use. While the building is up for sale, it is still used for weekly services.
