What remaining useful life is applied to places of worship?

For residential and commercial property, total useful life can be derived from the model assumptions. For places of worship that convenient route does not exist — and anyone who takes it anyway produces a report open to challenge.

Why the usual assumptions do not fit

Churches are built in solid construction, frequently preserved over centuries and continuously maintained. A total useful life of sixty or eighty years, as applied to residential buildings, does not reflect that. At the same time the actual remaining useful life is not limited by the fabric but by something else: by the question of how long the use will still be sustained.

Two levels that must be kept apart

• Technical remaining useful life. This follows the condition of structure, roof, façade and windows. For well-maintained places of worship it is regularly very long.
• Economic remaining useful life. This ends when the maintenance burden can no longer be borne or the parish gives the building up. For churches it is almost always the shorter and therefore the governing figure.

For valuation it follows that remaining useful life must be reasoned property by property, not taken from a table. What is drawn on is the condition of the building, the repairs carried out, the development of parish size and, where available, resolutions of the entity on future use.

Distinction from the tax-related remaining useful life report

The analysis described here serves the determination of market value. Where the aim is instead higher depreciation under section 7(4) sentence 2 EStG, separate requirements as to methodology and evidence apply; for that there is the Remaining useful life appraisal report.

How remaining useful life enters into the valuation of a place of worship is set out under Valuation of churches and ecclesiastical property.

For a deeper look: Market value of church buildings: How ecclesiastical properties are valued