Despite high-profile church bankruptcies like the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, CA—and maybe, in part, because of such foreclosures and bankruptcies—there’s an uptick in the religious real estate market in the Southeast and beyond.

Here are a few recent examples: In October, Crosspoint Christian Church snapped up the Grace Baptist Church Building in Cape Coral, FL for $800,000. That’s $400,000 less than it sold for in 1983. In August, Redeemer Evangelical Church of Memphis purchased a building and some land from Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee for $2.45 million. Unity Church of Fort Lauderdale sold its 2,800-square-foot church campus to Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church for $2.4 million in the same month. The list goes on and on.

All this is a stark turnaround from a year ago, when headlines suggested religious real estate can be a tough sale. Now, there’s so much action in the religious real estate market in the Southeast and across the country that brokerage groups specializing in this niche are growing. Orlando-based CNL Religious & Educational Real Estate, for instance, just added real estate veteran Chris Bury to lead the company’s West Coast operations. And CNL’s Orlando operations are also reporting strength.

Although some churches are still battling foreclosure, Bury recently told me that the market looks good for growing congregations right now. Some churches are leasing buildings rather than buying and others are growing and snapping up buildings at bottom-of-the-market prices. Meanwhile, Matt Messier, a religious real estate specialist at CNL Specialty Real Estate Services in Orlando, says there’s never been a better time to buy a church.

"In today's market, you are seeing where churches, like many people or businesses, were in expansion mode a few years ago and now can't make their payments," he told the Orlando Sentinel. "We are seeing more and more foreclosed church properties."

But brokers who want to enter this potentially lucrative market should be aware of the nuances of dealing with pastors, rabbis and other spiritual leaders. Dealing with buyers and sellers in the religious real estate market is often altogether different from most typical commercial real estate transactions. Namely, there are emotions tied to the buildings.

“Religious organizations are widely different from business users in how they view real estate,” Bury says. “This is where people were baptized and married, where they held funerals for their loved ones. You don’t get that kind of emotional attachment with an office building.”