The Mormon church is expanding its real-estate empire across the United States: ‘They’re opportunists in a very calculated way’

Just 20 minutes from Denver International Airport, plans are under way for an ambitious project on a stretch of empty land larger than Manhattan’s Central Park.

A new community, dubbed “Tributary,” is set to feature homes for more than 12,000 people, shops, parks, a school and a fire station. A parkway connected to the area will offer direct access to the airport, providing a pivotal connection for Denver’s adjacent suburbs.

Tributary’s developer, Property Reserve, is relatively unknown to many of the locals. But the name behind it is much more recognizable: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has owned the land for decades.

“They’re very excited to get started,” said Amy Wiles, a city council member in Aurora, home to the 960-acre (388-hectare) site. “It’s really the truly greatest opportunity our city has.”

The Colorado project is just a small slice of a sprawling real estate empire that the LDS church, widely known as the Mormon Church, has assembled over the past century. Through a web of subsidiaries, it has accumulated billions of dollars of properties from farms and ranches to apartments and hotels, becoming one of America’s largest — and least transparent — landowners.

Behind those holdings is a highly sophisticated investment operation more akin to a sovereign wealth fund than a religious institution, according to brokers and investors who have worked with the church. They describe a savvy organization that makes acquisitions with the intent to own property for generations, while also increasingly putting money into higher-return investments.

Long known for its farmland and temple sites, the church is starting to get more involved in housing and master-planned communities. That’s thrusting the church into the politics of building, with projects drawing debates over everything from water and infrastructure to environmental preservation and local control.

The church says all of its real estate holdings — an array of properties used for religious, historical preservation and investment purposes — are intended to support its mission of living and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Due to the population growth of cities, some legacy land holdings of the church are in the path of growth and better suited for residential and commercial development than farming,” said Tyler Buswell, global head of development for Property Reserve, the church’s real estate investment arm. The commercial real estate portfolio, meanwhile, has grown “purposefully to provide durable cash flow to fund the church’s mission,” he said in a statement.

The Salt Lake City-based church discloses little about its financial holdings, even to the nearly 18 million members who are expected to tithe 10% of their income. A Bloomberg News review of property records compiled by real estate data provider Reonomy shows that the Mormon church owns at least 2.4 million acres across the U.S. — an area almost twice the size of Delaware — with an assessed value in excess of $20 billion.

The real number is almost certainly much higher: The estimation doesn’t include holdings in nondisclosure states like Texas, which aren’t required to record sales prices publicly, or investments made through outside real estate funds and partnerships.

Opacity

The church declined to comment on the size of its portfolio. “They’re consistently active,” said Bernard Uechtritz, who owns Icon Global, a Dallas-based real estate brokerage that has worked with the church on ranch deals. “They’re opportunists in a good way, in a very calculated way.”

Some of the church’s growth centers on building temples: It has 221 globally, with 164 under construction or planned, according to its website. But it also has accelerated investing in revenue-producing properties through Property Reserve, which is led by Ashley Powell, a veteran real estate executive with a background at firms including Deutsche Bank AG and Bentall Kennedy, now known as BGO. Transactions at Property Reserve and a related affiliate have almost doubled since his 2017 arrival compared with the prior 10 years, Reonomy data show.

The church’s deals reflect both opportunity and a willingness to pay up. As hotels struggled during the pandemic, it snapped up a Residence Inn in Maui.

In 2021, its agricultural investment division outbid an investment firm tied to Bill Gates for a bankrupt portfolio of Washington farmland for almost $210 million. In April, Property Reserve acquired a Boca Raton apartment complex in one of South Florida’s priciest multifamily real estate transactions this year, according to data compiled by MSCI Inc.

The Mormons’ most consequential projects, however, may be development on a scale that can reshape entire regions. Along with Colorado’s Tributary, the church is planning a community across 4,000 acres of land it’s been acquiring since the 1980s in west Phoenix. Earlier this year, Property Reserve purchased almost 3,000 acres southwest of Austin, gaining development rights for thousands of homes. In central Florida, it’s developing a sprawling area called Sunbridge on a tract almost as large as San Francisco.

That project is so substantial that Florida created a special district, dubbed the Sunbridge Stewardship District, with an independent local government — usually first appointed by the landowners — designed to oversee funding of major infrastructure and development. These districts can issue tax-exempt bonds for financing.

The Mormon church is increasingly visible in American culture, from influencers with millions of followers to TV shows such as The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Behind that growing profile is an institution that has quietly accumulated enormous and varied wealth. Ensign Peak Advisors, the church’s nonprofit investment manager, reported more than $60 billion in publicly traded securities in its portfolio as of the end of June, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission 13F filing. That’s just a peek into its holdings, as such filings are limited to certain asset types.

That wealth has come under scrutiny. In 2023, the church and Ensign agreed to pay $5 million to settle SEC charges that it used shell companies to obscure holdings and avoid disclosure requirements. The church didn’t admit or deny the allegations, saying it regretted “mistakes made.” A former Ensign investment manager said in a 60 Minutes interview that year that “it was really a clandestine hedge fund” that misled members. The church called the claims “unfounded allegations by a former employee who has a different view on how the church should manage its resources.”

Long before it built a global investment empire, however, the church was accumulating land. Nearly two centuries ago, founder Joseph Smith envisioned communities built around temples and agriculture. After followers eventually settled in Utah, property ownership became intertwined with the church’s emphasis on self-sufficiency and preparing for the future.

The church experienced financial strains in its early history. In the 1960s, it selected Nathan Eldon Tanner, a successful businessman, to join the leadership. Tanner helped systematize the church’s overall real estate strategy, viewing property as a way to build long-term capital reserves, said Matthew Bowman, chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University.

Today, those real estate holdings are operated out of Utah, part of a centralized structure that distinguishes the Mormon church from other religious institutions. Catholic properties in the US, for instance, are generally controlled by individual dioceses, religious orders or parishes rather than the Vatican.

The Mormon church also differs in its leadership. Rather than a lifelong career in the clergy, members of its top ranks have professional backgrounds, Bowman said. Some have Harvard University MBAs and prior careers in business and finance.

A network of companies

The church holds its real estate across multiple entities. Farmland Reserve invests in agricultural properties such as farms, orchards and ranches, which also serve as important anchors for the church’s other businesses. Its holdings include Deseret Ranch, a Florida property it has owned since 1950. It now encompasses some 295,000 acres across three counties, according to its website, with tens of thousands of cattle and agricultural products including citrus, timber and sod. Another affiliate, Hawaii Reserves, manages more than 6,000 acres of land and properties in the state.

Property Reserve oversees a portfolio that includes offices, apartments and hotels, its website shows. Under Powell, it has expanded into Europe and Asia deals as well. Land Reserve, a for-profit, taxable entity that’s focused on master-planned building communities, is part of Property Reserve.

Reonomy’s data indicates the church’s biggest holdings are in its home state of Utah, with more than 3,600 properties and land holdings. It makes up roughly 22% of the entire known portfolio, followed by Florida and California at 9% and 7%, respectively. The data doesn’t include real estate investments made through separately managed accounts or outside funds.

The church also has exposure to property through the Deseret Mutual Master Retirement Plan, a pension plan funded by church-affiliated entities. As of 2024, that entity had investments of more than $574 million in real estate funds, according to public filings.

Real estate executives describe the institution as a prudent, smart player that invests with a view spanning 50 to 100 years. Its dealmakers often bid in cash and are known for closing quickly, according to brokers.

“If they have the money and appetite, they’ll be the best buyer and they’ll pay the most,” said John Huguenard, a senior managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.’s industrial practice. “They’re willing to pay a premium for long-term ownership, it’s significant enough. The biggest thing is there’s no contingency for financing. They’ll pay all cash.”

They have also sought to enshrine their religious principles in contracts. In the U.K., the church wanted to add clauses into all of the leases in an office building it bought that would prohibit tenants from subletting the space involved in selling alcohol or coffee, in accordance with the faith’s restrictions on members consuming the drinks, said a person close to the matter, who asked not to be named discussing private discussions.

While many of the church’s projects are still in early phases, Florida’s Sunbridge development offers insight into just how consequential and complicated some of these deals can be.

The church partnered with Tavistock Development Co. more than a decade ago to transform some 27,000 acres of former Deseret ranchland into a master-planned community over several decades. The vision calls for more than 36,000 homes alongside commercial development. More than 1,400 residences are already completed.

The church had much bigger ambitions in the area, planning a long-term development for far more residents. To do so, it proposed annexing more than 52,000 acres of Deseret Ranch property into the city of Orlando. It was halted in 2024, facing wide pushback from residents and Orange County elected officials.

Sunbridge’s scale has required infrastructure investments including roads and utility systems expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Clint Beaty, senior vice president of operations for Tavistock, said the developers spent two years working on a long-term conservation plan before construction, studying native plants, soil composition and water use. The development now uses AI to monitor household water consumption.

Critics argue the project’s broader footprint illustrates the costs of accommodating that growth. A proposed toll road, for instance, would run through a conservation area called Split Oak Forest.

“That’s not urban planning,” said Nicole Wilson, an Orange County commissioner. “That is just sprawl by every definition.”

In west central Florida, residents are girding for the prospect of a large master-planned community in a region that already has one of the state’s fastest-growing populations. Governor Ron DeSantis in June signed legislation designating a tract of mostly church-owned land in Hillsborough County. That raised alarms that potential new housing will further strain resources in the Tampa Bay area.

“It was like a bomb that has gone off in our neighborhood,” said Cori Campbell, a resident in Sundance, a rural equestrian community that’s near the district. She said her property was recently reclassified from a minimal to a high-risk flood hazard area, and she fears additional development will only make it worse, along with affecting traffic and wildlife.

By contrast, others — such as Sarah Wile, a city council member in Aurora — are optimistic about commercial development that would make the neighborhood more vibrant: retail shops, offices and a much-needed grocery store. The church’s investment, she says, “represents the ability for the area to be more self-sustainable and to have what we need to continue the growth, because the growth is not stopping.”

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