How church, ministry leaders afford beach houses, waterfront vacation homes
Beach houses and beach condos along the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts have become the vacation homes of choice for America’s wealthiest pastors and ministry leaders.
Over the past three years, the investigative nonprofit Trinity Foundation has conducted hundreds of property searches, resulting in the discovery of 40 beach houses, beach condos and waterfront homes in coastal cities owned by church and ministry leaders and their nonprofit organizations. These 40 properties — a few of which are listed in the piece — are worth a combined $140 million.
For this report, Trinity Foundation restricted the definition of a beach house to a home or condo within 1 mile of a beach. This restrictive definition prevented the inclusion of such properties as televangelist David E. Taylor’s $8 million Tampa parsonage and other expensive pastor-owned vacation homes.
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Two waterfront properties, while technically more than 1 mile inland, were included in this report, because of their construction next to canals with large boat docks, allowing the property owner to quickly travel by yacht into the Gulf of Mexico.
Thirty of the properties are vacation homes, with Florida being the most common location for these residences. The most expensive secondary pastor residence is for sale at a price of $14.9 million.
World-famous televangelist Benny Hinn has two beach homes, one of which is located in Dana Point, California, and valued at $12 million, according to the real estate website Redfin.
During a 2007-2011 inquiry into religious ministry abuses of the tax code, Hinn’s attorney informed Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that Benny Hinn Ministries “decided the best use for the facility was as a retreat for pastor's [sic] contemplation and study, church-purposed entertaining, and for short-term overnight stays preceding or following travel.”
In 2013, Hinn transferred the Dana Point home to his assistant Donald B. Price and Dominion Land Trust, possibly through a straw buyer arrangement. However, in 2020, a corporation filing revealed that Hinn was still using the residence.
In 2020, Hinn also purchased a nearly $2 million beach condo in Palm Coast, Florida. His son-in-law, Michael Koulianos, who leads the ministry Jesus Image, also acquired a beach house in Palm Coast.
Joel Osteen, senior pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, purchased a beach house in Newport Coast, California, for $5 million in 2017. Recently, Redfin estimated Osteen’s second home to be worth $11 million.
Background
The accumulation of wealth by America’s religious leaders is an under-reported story. To understand the big picture requires identifying the property assets of hundreds of pastors and ministry leaders to build an informative data set.
Adding to the challenge, the most expensive real estate is often hidden in trusts or shell companies, and privacy laws in some states complicate the process of identifying property owners.
Informants have also played an important role in identifying and confirming some of the properties.
While not comprehensive, Trinity Foundation’s residential property data set is large enough to produce informed analyses. Here are more of our findings.
Book royalties fund lavish lifestyles
How do religious leaders afford such properties? Three common methods appear to be book royalties, clergy housing allowances and speaking honorariums.
Thirty-two of the properties analyzed by Trinity Foundation are owned by religious leaders who have authored books or are owned by religious leaders' ministries.
Osteen, for example, stopped collecting a salary from Lakewood Church after his book Your Best Life Now became a bestseller in 2004.
For his second book, The New York Times reported that Osteen negotiated “a 50-50 split on profits,” which was estimated to be worth as much as $13 million at the time.
Hinn was another bestselling author in the 1990s and sold some 500,000 copies of his book, Good Morning Holy Spirit.
Additional authors who reportedly appeared on bestseller lists and own beach properties include Pastors Jentezen Franklin and John Hagee, along with Joni Lamb, co-founder of TV broadcaster Daystar.
Sometimes, the author’s church or ministry buys large quantities of books to give away, and the author receives book royalties for these purchases.
Housing allowances
Tax-exempt clergy housing allowances, which are frequently secret to donors, might have also paid for some of the homes.
Based on informant data, unsealed court records and Form 990s, at least four religious leaders with beach houses have received housing allowances in excess of $100,000.
Housing allowance information is disclosed in two places in the 990s; the first location is column F in the Compensation of Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees, Highest Compensated Employees, and Independent Contractors section.
Section J, which is frequently not included in 990 filings, reports if a nonprofit organization provides housing or a housing allowance.
Median cost of a home in the US
Redfin reported the median sale price for a home in the U.S. in May was $439,716. For comparison’s sake, only three of the 40 properties analyzed by Trinity Foundation cost less than $439,000.
Due to inflation and other factors, several properties have doubled in value in recent years.
Johnny Hunt, a former Southern Baptist Convention president, purchased a beach house in 2020 for $925,000. Redfin reports the home is now worth $1.9 million.
Some pastors appear to be purchasing beach houses as an investment. For example, Richard Wilkerson Jr., lead pastor of Vous Church in Miami, is one of four co-owners of a $3 million home.
Parsonages
Unless a church or ministry is located in a coastal area, they are unlikely to own a parsonage near a beach.
Trinity Foundation also found a beach house and beach condo that appear to be parsonages owned by ministries. Both ministries could be more transparent to donors.
One of these ministries, Moretti Ministries, claims on its website that “100% of All Donations Go to the Work, Not Administrative Costs. Every dollar you give to Moretti Ministries goes to the work in the field."
The ministry’s website also states that its founders’ vision is to provide “assistance for the building of centers for worship and education in developing countries.”
In 2022, Moretti Ministries purchased a home in Englewood, Florida, for $2.4 million, which is tax exempt. It's not known how the ministry is using the property.
Moretti Ministries has not filed a 2022 Form 990 disclosing the new real estate.
The second ministry that has a parsonage, Passion & Fire Ministries, led by Brian Simmons, the author of the controversial Passion Translation version of the Bible, who also has a long history of preaching questionable theology and false prophecies, purchased a beach condo at the Redington Shores Yacht and Tennis Club.
While Simmons’ ministry reports on its latest 990 the ownership of buildings worth $1.2 million, it doesn’t disclose to donors if the ministry provides Simmons with a parsonage or housing allowance because a Schedule J is not included with the 990.
Read more at the Trinity Foundation where this report was originally published.
