Changing Needs Fuel Big Faith Groups’ Property Sales

Several major U.S. religious denominations are simultaneously downsizing and fundraising by selling off properties, often in pricey urban neighborhoods, as changing financial and social circumstances alter their space requirements, The New York Times reports.

Among other examples, the Unitarian Universalist Association is expected to raise millions of dollars in deals for its headquarters and other buildings in Boston’s elite Beacon Hill neighborhood; Brooklyn-based Jehovah’s Witnesses are selling dozens of buildings in the up-and-coming Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights communities; and the United Methodist Church is selling publishing houses in downtown Nashville.

After a century of relative stability and growing wealth, denominations are considering whether prime properties “have outlived their usefulness,” said James Hudnut-Beumler, a professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University. “They’re finding themselves pressed for finances, and making some hard choices about property, and so we’re seeing more sales in the last decade than we had for the last century.”