The house of God has become the latest victim of the property crunch, according to a survey. Nearly 200 US churches have had their properties seized by lenders since 2008 – compared to eight in the two previous years – and more are to come.

Religious leaders were just as swept up by the property boom and bust as their parishioners, according to a survey by CoStar Group.

During the years of feast religious leaders took advantage of easy credit to build bigger churches and cater to bigger, richer congregations. Now the years of famine mean smaller, poorer congregations but still facing the bills for the bigger houses of worship they built.

Foreclosure proceedings against US churches have more than tripled since 2007, when the recession took hold. All religious denominations have suffered as donations have declined. But the financial crisis has hit independent churches hardest because they lack well funded governing bodies capable of bailing them out.

Last year Ebenezer AME, one of the biggest churches in the US, with a congregation of 10,000, ran into trouble with its lenders. Banks demanded the church cut expenses as it struggled to make its mortgage payments.

An investigation by a Memphis, Tennessee, television station found hundreds of churches in the city fighting foreclosure. There are 200 churches in Atlanta alone facing foreclosure, according to Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder of civil rights organisation Rainbow/Push.

Jackson said African American and Latino communities had been hit particularly hard: "It's communities not just churches that are in foreclosure. We have paid more for less, churches and their members are being dragged down by debt," he said. "The church is the centre of our community."

Chris Macke, analyst at CoStar, said the boom in foreclosures was due to the financial squeeze on parishioners and overly aggressive projections of future income from churches.

Churches had fallen victim to "recency bias," he said. "Whatever happened most recently is what will happen in perpetuity, which is ironic considering that churches deal in issues of perpetuity," he said.