St. Thomas Syro-Malabar Catholic Church of San Francisco

A great place for Malayalee (Kerala, India) Catholics in the Bay Area to gather, worship and nurture family friendships.

This review has to do with my extensive interaction with this church related to the property in Milpitas they are selling. I would first state that as far as I can tell, this church and its leaders seem to be decently nice people in all normal aspects that I am aware of (other than the below). However, in their endeavors to sell their former church property in Milpitas, several surprises arose, including: 1. The church is trying to sell that property for nearly $8M, but it was appraised for only barely $4M. The church tries to justify the discrepancy by pointing out a preschool meets on site, but simple market research shows the preschool is not worth anything remotely close to the additional $4M (or even half of that). 2. Their building expansion performed several years ago was not done with the necessary permits. Per Milpitas regulations, this means that any future owner who wants to make any legal revisions to the building (such as bringing the restrooms into ADA compliance, a legal necessity) will have to bring the entire property into compliance. This will be a very costly project. 3. As mentioned above, the restrooms are not ADA compliant. 4. No renovations involving permits have been performed on the building for nearly 20 years. You can imagine what that means in terms of the renovation needs of the building and its various systems (even apart from the above). We were unpleasantly surprised by all the above and more and were disappointed that the church did not inform us of the above, apparently hoping none of the above would be uncovered and that we would unwittingly carry through and purchase an overpriced lemon. Again, I have no doubt that these people may be good and nice people overall, but in terms of this real estate transaction that nearly went through, the above was my unpalatable experience.

Very vibrant Catholic Church with the Eastern Syro-Malabar Catholic Liturgy and celebration of faith and traditions!