Following the recent announcement that MJ Mapp has been appointed on the Church of England portfolio, we wanted to highlight why commercial property owners should consider renting out their properties to churches.
Quite often, commercial property owners have never even thought about the third sector. It has been ruled out because it’s not seen as having a stable income. Church use is absent in commercial property owners’ deliberations regarding what type of client might rent their properties.
The Church of England still owns a portfolio worth £2bn and more than 100,000 acres of land. However, with a change in dynamic, this sector is often struggling to find appropriate buildings in which to grow and develop.
There is another reason renting to a church organisation can be attractive. Suitable properties are quite difficult to source.
Therefore, churches are often willing to pay slightly more when they find the right properties to fulfil their needs. The fact that very few new churches are being built, yet new churches start every day, simply means demand far outweighs supply.
New churches are not averse to considering redundant office spaces, warehousing and industrial buildings as potential places of worship. You may well be sitting on a commercial property that would be of considerable interest to a church organisation without even realising.
James Adebayo is a director at Tunji Adebayo & Co
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