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Date: April 05, 2022 05:53PM
At least 1.7 million acres worth at least $16 billion.
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/04/05/new-database-gives-widest/A (probably not complete) list
https://main.d1r5pe9ovkw8w9.amplifyapp.com/A map:
https://www.truthandtransparency.org/news/2022/04/05/lds-church-has-most-valuable-private-real-estate-portfolio-in-the-us-evidence-suggests/For those who cannot access the Trib site, some details
"Found in the church’s portfolio — along with the expected meetinghouses and temples — are office towers, shopping centers, residential skyscrapers, cattle ranches and high-mountain timberlands worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The faith is now Florida’s biggest landowner, controlling well above 2% of its landmass, including an enormous collection of pasturelands outside resort-rich Orlando called Deseret Ranches and a recently acquired expanse of hundreds of thousands of forested acres in the Panhandle"
"Church companies such as Property Reserve, Suburban Land Reserve and Farmland Reserve are sitting on large tracts of developable land in a host of American suburbs. These holdings are heavy in metro regions throughout the rapidly growing South and West — just as the U.S. economy is primed with high demand for new homebuilding.
Even this partial portfolio would make the church — with nearly 7 million members nationally and more than 16.6 million worldwide — the fifth largest private landowner in the U.S., according to The Land Report, which tracks holdings among some of the nation’s wealthiest families."
"Church holdings top $100 million in assessed valuation in at least 15 major urban centers — based on 2019 tax data — and exceed $25 million in at least 66 cities."
"Frequently clustered around Latter-day Saint temples, the portfolio’s most lucrative commercial holdings feature in the country’s top downtown cores."
"The list contains up to $696 million or more in residential lands, vacant spaces and other swaths in America’s suburbs, much of it poised for development. The database details a total of at least 181,000 acres in empty residential lands and vacant farmlands in larger and rapidly growing metro areas, places such as Tulsa, Okla.; Kansas City, Mo.; Lafayette, Ind.; Albany, Ga.; and Modesto, Calif. (where the church just announced plans to build a temple)."
"The database documents farm holdings worth at least $2.3 billion, with notably huge sections of it in Nebraska, rural Montana, Florida, Texas and Utah. Farms, ranches, pastures, orchards and other agricultural lands under church ownership stretch horizon to horizon, with tens of thousands of contiguous acres in many cases."
"Its holdings include acres assessed for use as island resorts, hotels, airports, golf courses, amusement parks, theaters, vineyards, warehouses, truck stations, funeral homes, health clubs, mines and cemeteries. There are even millions of dollars in thousands of tiny odd-shaped parcels and other bits and pieces known as easements."
"Church authorities have consistently said that their for-profit real estate and other business endeavors pay the required taxes.
The vast majority of church properties in the new database are categorized by county assessors for worship, making them tax-exempt.
Add to that a host of other special-purpose properties, dedicated public spaces, vacant areas and other kinds of low-producing acreage, and nearly $8.5 billion total assessed value in the church land portfolio potentially would qualify for lower local property taxes, not including farmlands."
And then this:
"The Tribune found several high-dollar church properties missing from the database, for instance, including some held under other church companies. And this tally excludes huge church landholdings internationally."
"For all the church’s documented U.S. land wealth, scholarly research shows the denomination owns and manages large reserves of land in Britain — of a size rivaling the royal estate — along with massive acreages in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Australia."