adoptchurches

An atlas of church buildings for sale — in the United States, England and France — and a pledge registry so a neighborhood can buy one back together.

332 buildings · 39 US states, 34 in England, 21 in France · $453M of asking price · median $800,000

Every building on the map is a real, currently-listed property. Each row links back to its source listing. Nothing here is a mockup of a listing.

What it does

• A map of every church for sale, across three countries, with country filters, price bands and search by town, county or name.
• “Sort by distance” — uses the browser's location to reorder the list by how far each building is from you, with distances shown.
• Per-building pages with the listing's own description, the location, a mini map, and a plain-language explanation of how a group would actually buy it.
• A pledge registry. Anyone can attach a name, an amount, and a reason to a building. The page shows how many pledges there are, the total, and how far that is from the asking price.

What a pledge is (and is not)

A pledge is an expression of interest: a name, an amount, optionally a note. No card is collected, no money moves, and no escrow exists. When a building's pledges approach its asking price, the group is introduced to a title company and a real-estate attorney, and money starts moving under an entity the neighbors form themselves.

It is not a donation mechanism, an investment, a security, or a Reg CF offering. The site is not a broker, does not represent sellers, and is not affiliated with any congregation, denomination, or listing site.

Stack

• Next.js 15 (App Router) + React 19 + TypeScript, no CSS framework — one hand-written stylesheet.
• Leaflet with CARTO/OpenStreetMap tiles (no API key, no tracking SDK).
• Listings in data/listings.json; every page is statically generated (291 pages).
• Pledges: POST /api/pledges, stored as JSON on disk for the prototype.

app/
  page.tsx                    hero + the atlas
  church/[id]/page.tsx        listing page + pledge panel
  api/pledges/route.ts        GET aggregates, POST a pledge
  globals.css                 the whole design system
components/
  Atlas.tsx                   map + list + search + geolocation
  PledgePanel.tsx             progress + pledge form
  MiniMap.tsx                 single-building map
data/listings.json            the dataset
scripts/
  harvest.mjs                 rebuild the dataset from public listing sources
  from-loopnet-saved-page.mjs LoopNet adapter (reads pages you save yourself)
lib/
  data.ts, pledges.ts, types.ts

Run it

npm install
npm run dev          # http://localhost:3000
npm run build        # static generation for every listing

Refreshing the data

node scripts/harvest.mjs        # nationwide refresh, ~40s
node scripts/harvest.mjs CA TX  # or just some states

The harvest pulls only commercial listings typed Special Purpose, then keeps a building when its own listing text describes a religious building — church, chapel, cathedral, temple, parish, ministry, sanctuary, or a denomination in the name.

Two filters are deliberate:

• Addresses are scrubbed first. A shop at “123 Church St” or a lot on “Cathedral Lane” never makes the map, because the street name is not evidence of a church.
• Land parcels are dropped. A listing that describes only acreage is not a building to save and is not shown.

Why LoopNet is not crawled

LoopNet blocks automated requests — Akamai returns Access Denied to plain HTTP and to a real browser — so scripts/from-loopnet-saved-page.mjs instead parses pages you save yourself and merges them in, geocoding with the free US Census geocoder. The shipped dataset came from Crexi's public search index, which covers the same brokers and buildings. Every listing carries its source and source_url so the provenance is explicit.

England and France

node scripts/harvest-heritage.mjs         # both non-US sources
node scripts/harvest-heritage.mjs cofe    # just the Church of England

• Church of England — the official list of closed church buildings available for disposal. Every building on it, with the exact coordinates the page publishes for its own map markers, then each building's page for grade, description, guide price and the agent's link. Thirty-four buildings; most are "offers invited" rather than a listed price.
• Patrice Besse — their register of religious edifices for sale in France. schema.org microdata gives price, currency and locality; coordinates come from Nominatim, one request per second with a real User-Agent.

Prices stay in the seller's currency on screen (£95,000, €30,000) and are converted to dollars only for sorting and totals. The rate used is written to data/fx.json with its date, so any figure can be re-derived.

Deploy

vercel works with no configuration. Note that serverless filesystems are read-only, so the pledge store falls back to process memory there — point PLEDGE_DIR at a mounted volume, or replace lib/pledges.ts with a database, before inviting real pledges.

License

MIT for the code. Listing data belongs to its sources; each row links back.