There are over 500 churches for sale in North America right now. Prices range from $35K to $50M. Don’t believe me? Here’s a screenshot of active listings from moments ago:
My favorite and most reliable sites to peruse are Loopnet (seen above) and Loopnet has every commercial real estate property type with easy ways to filter down to whatever you’re looking for. Parking lots, storage units, schools, banks, shopping plazas, airports, drug stores, or my personal obsession…churches.
Getting here is simple! Simply input desired location, select ‘For Sale’, select ‘Specialty’, and finally select ‘Religious Facilities’.
You can also narrow down to price and building size but let’s not be too picky! Prices are always ~negotiable~. You’ll now have generated a gorgeous rabbit hole full of mansions, fixer uppers, rich history, and controversy. Don’t start this search at 11PM because you’ll still be in the scroll hole at 1:30AM.
Crexi is also a reliable choice for searching for churches for sale online.
What Crexi has that’s a bit more intuitive than Loopnet is the interactive maps for a geographic area. Let’s say you’re looking to buy a church in Massachusetts with the intention to transform it into an apartment building. Since you don’t want to develop an apartment building in no man’s land, so you’ll need to assess the opportunity based on population. Crexi will turn an entire state into an easy to understand heat map based on this info. If you pay for premium (which I don’t), you get even more builds like interactive maps with median income, traffic count, and points of interest.
If you’ve exhausted the 725 listings on Loopnet and Crexi, you can always roll the dice on Facebook Marketplace. My strategy is to set the largest radius possible, type in ‘Church’ and hope for the best. I think I’ve seen maybe 5 churches ever in my life. I more so come here for the treasure hunt/entertainment. If nothing else, you’ll see a lot of listings for really stunning stained glass and church pews.
I just tested the theory for the sake of this post and low and behold:
I have spent countless hours on these sites over many years. Sorting by ‘price low to high’, googling ‘what’s there to do in West Virginia’ when I find the perfect church for a potential single family home conversion, and concluding my nightly search with ‘price high to low’ for delusions of grandeur.
Whether you’re serious about buying a church, or simply humoring yourself, platforms like Loopnet, Crexi, and even Facebook Marketplace are the perfect place to start your search.