A growing number of New York City-based nonprofits are selling their buildings, in part because capital gains generated by the city's red-hot real estate market provide much-need funds for critical missions, but also because many groups have concluded that leasing is a much easier and less expensive proposition than owning, the New York Times reports.

According to numbers recently compiled by Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate services company, thirty-two nonprofit organizations acquired properties in Manhattan last year valued at a total of $293 million, while thirty-two others sold properties valued at almost $582 million. And for the third year in a row, proceeds accruing to nonprofits from the sale of real estate exceeded purchases, with healthcare institutions responsible for four of the top five sales.

As part of a consolidation effort, for example, Beth Israel Medical Center sold a satellite hospital to a residential developer for $166.5 million, while the New York chapter of the American Red Cross sold its West Side headquarters building for $72 million, even though it didn't have a new to move into.

The latter is something real estate brokers say nonprofits should avoid; instead, organizations should have a clear acquisition strategy in mind before proceeding with a sale. That was the case with the American Cancer Society, which wanted to sell the midtown offices it had owned for more than thirty years and build the city's first Hope Lodge, a residential facility that would provide free lodging for cancer patients. ACS began looking at potential sites in 2002, and in February of this year purchased a condominium in a commercial and residential development project.

Other recent transactions in the city include the Hazelden Foundation's sale of its Victorian-era building for $10.25 million, about three times what it paid for the property in 1991. The organization, which is headquartered in the Twin Cities area, has leased office space elsewhere in the city and will use the proceeds from the sale to construct or acquire a residential addiction-treatment center for adolescents and young adults in the New York area. "We thought we could make our building asset work a lot harder for us," said Hazelden president and CEO Ellen L. Breyer, "rather than having to go out into the community with a large capital campaign."