Relocating Your Church? Should you Buy, Build or Convert?
This may be the strangest article you ever read about conversion. Because we are talking about converting commercial/retail building to churches.
It seems like everywhere you turn today someone is reporting another problem with the economy and I don’t know about you but I have had about all of it I can stand.
I think it is interesting that there are two characters in Chinese that make up the word CRISIS, those characters when taken separately translate into DANGER and OPPORTUNITY. There are plenty of people talking to us about the dangers of our times; I prefer to direct our attention today to the opportunities that are already starting to manifest themselves.
This all started at the national sales meeting for Service Realty, Inc. in Dallas held this past March. One session was a discussion led by a panel of bankers and church lending experts. Based on many factors they warned that there is a commercial foreclosure wave coming later this year or early next and it will be formidable.
Armed with this information I began a search of retail and commercial properties that could potentially be converted to church and very quickly found a few to evaluate. We have been involved in several conversions in the past ranging from grocery stores to movie theaters and even car dealerships so the concept is not new to us.
It didn’t take long, in a matter of days I had identified several. Some were already foreclosed, some were no longer needed by the commercial user, some were investor owned and the investor wanted out. This makes a good situation for the buyers, especially end users like churches.
Anyone that has worked with us knows that one of the things we always do is ask you to get prepared financially and that is more important than ever when you are looking at acquiring one of these distressed buildings to convert to church. The buyer that has their money in their pocket (or their banker in their pocket) are the ones that will be successful because usually the sellers will only deal with those they are sure can close the transaction quickly.
Next, surround yourself with a team of professionals. You need a real estate broker that understands the requirements of churches as well as zoning, parking issues etc. Hire the best you can get, it costs you nothing in the vast majority of cases.
In the case of a building conversion you will need a team that knows construction from A to Z. When we set out to evaluate the first of the buildings we found we partnered with a Construction Management group that is comprised of the project manager, an architect, interior designer all with experience in retrofitting buildings. Proper professionals will save you time and money and are often the difference between a successful project and a mess.