
The verdant lawns promise everlasting rest — but what does it mean to sign a lease for all eternity? Zachary Crockett finds out where the bodies are buried. This episode was originally published on March 31st, 2024.
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Zachary Crockett
In the city of Oakland, California, you'll find one of America's most scenic cemeteries. Perched in the hills, it has unobstructed views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay. These 226 acres of prime real estate are occupied by the remains of titans of industry like the founders of Folgers Coffee and Ghirardelli Chocolate. And if you want to join them six feet under, it'll cost you dearly.
Jeff Lindemann
You might pay as much as $50,000 for a premium plot.
Zachary Crockett
Jeff Lindemann is the CEO of Mountain View Cemetery. You might not think of cemeteries as having CEOs, but they're a $3 billion industry in the US and there's a lot riding on them making money because they've made an eternal promise to the people buried there.
Jeff Lindemann
When we sell a plot, crypto niche, the idea is that you put enough money away in the trust fund so that over time you can care for the cemetery forever.
Zachary Crockett
When you're selling a finite resource, though the word forever can be a bit tricky.
Tanya Marsh
It's really kind of greedy, you know, from a land use perspective to say a person who died is going to occupy this couple square feet of real estate forever. Forever. And we're never, ever, ever going to change it.
Zachary Crockett
For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, cemeteries. For most of human history, we didn't bury our deceased in the ground. When our oldest ancestors died, they were often left in caves, burned or pushed out to sea. The modern practice of burying people in dedicated graveyards began with organized religion. And when the first Europeans settled in America, they brought that practice with them.
Tanya Marsh
For the first couple hundred years of European settlement in America, we really had church cemeteries and family owned cemeteries, like a little corner of a farm.
Zachary Crockett
That's Tanya Marsh. She's a professor of law at Wake Forest University and she holds A bit of a unique distinction as far as I know.
Tanya Marsh
I teach the only course in funeral and cemetery law at a U.S. law school.
Zachary Crockett
Marsh says that America started to rethink its cemetery system during the industrial revolution. Church graveyards tended to be right in the middle of town. As urban populations grew, those burial grounds became overcrowded and unsanitary.
Tanya Marsh
They were burying people on top of each other for, you know, way more than 100 years. And it was smelly and it was not awesome to have in the middle of these downtowns. And so they started to build these so called rural cemeteries outside major metropolitan areas in the United States.
Zachary Crockett
Today, thousands of these cemeteries dot the American landscape. Some of them look like giant parks with trees, benches, and winding paths. Others look kind of like golf courses with green lawns and flat headstones. Many of these cemeteries are run by religious organizations, local municipalities, or the federal government. In those cases, the funds for running them come from the church or from taxpayers. But a sizable portion of cemeteries are owned by private companies or nonprofits, and those are a big business.
Tanya Marsh
Cemeteries are just another real estate use. Right. So if you're thinking about what's the use for a particular piece of land and how can I make money from it? Well, cemeteries might be an option.
Jeff Lindemann
We are there to serve consumers who have a little bit of money, and we are there to serve consumers who want something more extravagant.
Zachary Crockett
Again, that's Jeff Lindemann, the CEO of Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. The cemetery was built as a nonprofit in the 1860s, and today 205,000 people and counting are interred there. Like most cemeteries, Mountain View has a pretty simple business model. It owns a piece of land, and customers pay to be buried there. But those customers aren't actually buying real estate.
Jeff Lindemann
Consumers often mistakenly think that when they purchase a grave, they're purchasing the land and they're not. What they're really purchasing is an easement on the land for burial rights.
Zachary Crockett
In other words, those bodies in the cemetery are renters with a veeery long term lease. Nationwide, the average cost for a traditional cemetery plot is around $3,600. In a small town municipal cemetery, you might be able to find one for as little as $1,000. And in a more desirable private cemetery, burial spaces go for many multiples more. The Pierce brothers Westwood Village Memorial park and mortuary is filled with celebrities there. A crypt near Marilyn Monroe recently went on the market for $2 million. And the plot itself is only one small part of the cost a cemetery charges you for a burial
Jeff Lindemann
when the time Comes, you will typically incur charges for opening and closing the plot. Most cemeteries will require what we call an outer burial container, and typically, there might be a recording fee. In addition, if you want to purchase a headstone, and most people do, There would be a range of prices Applicable to that as well.
Zachary Crockett
If you tally up all the extra costs, A traditional burial at a cemetery can easily exceed $20,000. What you get in return is a guarantee that your remains will be cared for in perpetuity.
Tanya Marsh
The law promises us forever when we're talking about cemeteries in many states for profit.
Zachary Crockett
And nonprofit cemeteries like mountain view have to put a portion of what you pay into something called a perpetual trust or an endowment fund. That money is invested, and the income is used to keep the cemetery operational for as long as possible.
Jeff Lindemann
So that money might be used to mow the lawn, for example. If we have a landslide in the cemetery, it would be used to shore up that landslide. It would be used, for example, to hire an arborist to come out periodically and care for the trees.
Zachary Crockett
Upkeep at a cemetery can be expensive. At mountain view, the landscaping and gardening bill is around $900,000 a year. Utilities run half a million, and repairs are just shy of 275,000. Lindemann says his cemetery has more than $100 million in its endowment fund to cover these costs long term. But not every cemetery is so lucky.
Jeff Lindemann
Unfortunately, there have been instances where organizations have not put enough money in their trusts. And when those organizations close, we've all seen the cemeteries that have fallen into disarray.
Tanya Marsh
Yeah, there's going to be a lot of cemeteries going out of business in the next 20 years.
Zachary Crockett
I think when a cemetery goes bankrupt, A few things can happen. In many states, the local government is permitted to step in, but marsh says there's not much of an incentive to do so.
Tanya Marsh
Most municipalities and counties don't want to take on the tax burden if there's no money in a perpetual care fund. So, as a result, we have a fairly significant number of abandoned cemeteries in the united states.
Zachary Crockett
If a judge approves it, the owner of a bankrupt cemetery can sometimes sell its land for development. All of the buried bodies have to be exhumed at the expense of the buyer. In 2012, the city of Chicago spent $17 million to relocate 15,000 graves so it could build a new Runway at o' hare international airport. And in northern California, a church had to exhume and relocate Dozens of unmarked graves from the 1800s before selling an adjacent plot of land to a developer.
Tanya Marsh
I mean, this is one of the funny things about this whole promise of perpetual care. Forever means forever until the living decide they want to do something else with that piece of property.
Zachary Crockett
When these cemeteries go away, they're often not replaced because opening a new cemetery is its own unique challenge. Cemeteries are generally exempt from paying property taxes, and they don't create a lot of jobs, so municipalities aren't too keen about using scarce land to house dead people. Potential neighbors usually object too.
Jeff Lindemann
Generally, people don't want this cemetery in their backyard. They know that they need to have some form of disposition someday, but not in their backyard.
Zachary Crockett
More than 3 million Americans die each year, and for existing cemeteries, the concern is finding enough space to accommodate everyone.
Jeff Lindemann
The land that's easy to develop at the cemetery is pretty much fully developed.
Zachary Crockett
This fixed supply has given birth to an unusual resale market for cemetery plots that's coming up
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Zachary Crockett
If you want to be buried in a cemetery, you have two options. You can wait until you die and leave it to your family to figure out, or you can buy a plot in advance. Let's say you snatch up a burial plot 20 years before your time comes, and then you decide that plot isn't where you want to spend eternity. What do you do with the plot? In a lot of cases, the cemetery won't buy it back. You can list it on ebay or Craigslist and try to find someone who's looking for a gravesite just like yours. But your best bet is to head to a certified cemetery plot broker Terry
Terry Arellano
Arellano and I am president of Cemetery
Zachary Crockett
Property Resales, Inc. Terry Arellano is kind of like a real estate broker. For final resting places, she helps people sell plots they've already purchased or buy them at a discounted rate. In return, she charges a flat fee of around 100 bucks.
Terry Arellano
Most of our sellers are actually referred to us by the cemetery, and most of our buyers are referred to us by the funeral home or a caseworker, A hospice caretaker.
Zachary Crockett
Over nearly 30 years, Arellano has facilitated the transfer of 15,000 burial plots at more than 50 cemeteries all over the San Francisco Bay Area. She can get you a space for 20 to 80% below what the cemetery
Terry Arellano
charges rather than going straight to the cemetery and buying a space that's $8,000 or $10,000 for a single space. We have those for $3,000, $4,000.
Zachary Crockett
Most commonly, people sell their plots because they've moved away and want to be buried somewhere else. But there are other reasons, too.
Terry Arellano
Oh, this is a good one. The wife purchased two spaces when her first husband died, and so the first husband, he's in one space, and the one right next to it is reserved for the wife when her time comes. Well, now she's gotten remarried, who's calling us husband number two? He Wants to make sure that space is sold because she's not going to go into that space next to husband number one.
Zachary Crockett
Arellano says more and more people end up selling their plots for financial reasons. Many times, someone will buy a plot decades in advance without realizing there are additional burial costs down the line.
Terry Arellano
So you can imagine maybe somebody bought a grave 40 years ago, and they paid $200 for it, and so they feel like, oh, thank goodness we've got our final resting place. Well, then somebody dies, and they go to the cemetery, and they go, okay, we're ready, and here's some paperwork. And all of a sudden they have to pay the cemetery $10,000.
Zachary Crockett
In recent decades, some cemetery plots have appreciated in value more than the housing market. Spaces priced at 3,000 to $4,000 30 years ago are now often going for $25,000.
Terry Arellano
The only thing you can always be
Tanya Marsh
assured of is that cemetery prices will go up every year, Regardless of what the market is doing.
Zachary Crockett
That's maureen walton. She's the founder of the online listing service, the cemetery exchange. It's kind of like zillow, but for cemetery spaces on the site, you can browse through nearly 10,000 cemetery properties for sale across the country.
Tanya Marsh
We might have somebody that's selling a single grave space in indianapolis for, let's say, $1,000 up to a private crypt in hollywood forever cemetery for 250,000.
Zachary Crockett
But Walton says that traditional burial plots are getting a little harder to sell. Six out of 10Americans are now opting for cremation, which is double what the rate was 20 years ago. This is partly because it's a much cheaper alternative than a casket burial.
Terry Arellano
You could get cremated for under $2,000 and walk out with a really nice urn. And then you can decide to be
Tanya Marsh
on somebody's mantle for eternity or scattered somewhere.
Zachary Crockett
For the cemeteries themselves, this is actually a welcome trend, because running out of land is a serious concern. Once the grave plots are all used up, there's no more revenue. Cemeteries have experimented with all kinds of ways to maximize capacity. They've buried caskets upright rather than horizontally. They've used double decker plots to accommodate multiple bodies. But tanya marsh, the law professor, says it's a lot easier to find space for an urn than a casket.
Tanya Marsh
One of my favorite cemeteries is greenwood cemetery in brooklyn. And for the past 40 years, they've been saying about every 10 years, we've got about 10 years left in greenwood. But they keep figuring out ways to kind of squeeze in more space. And one way cemeteries in urban areas have figured out to do it is to build spreading gardens for cremated remains. You can create a spreading garden and let people spread ashes even in a full cemetery. Right.
Zachary Crockett
Jeff Lindemann says Mountain View Cemetery has gotten a bit more liberal about its cremation policies.
Jeff Lindemann
So often somebody will purchase a grave for a full casket burial, but we will allow families to later on add cremated remains to that grave. So in a sense, it enables us to expand the resource without necessarily having to expand the perimeter or the borders of the cemetery.
Zachary Crockett
Mountain view charges around $1,500 for each additional urn buried with an existing plot, plus the cost to open and close the ground. If you get enough family members on board, that plot with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge might become a bit more feasible.
Jeff Lindemann
So, for example, let's say you like that plot with the great view. It's $30,000, and you purchase it for a single casket burial. You can also purchase future burial rights for cremations at a much lesser cost. So conceivably, you may eventually inter five or six family members in that single grave. After the additional cremation burial rite cost, let's say we come to $36,000 for that grave. Now you've got a cost per individual of 6,000 as compared to 30,000 for a single grave person.
Zachary Crockett
Mountain View has around $25 million worth of grave space left. Lindemann spends most of his time thinking about how he can stretch that out as long as possible. Cemeteries in many other countries don't share this concern.
Jeff Lindemann
There are countries where permanent burial is either a luxury or it's simply not allowed.
Tanya Marsh
You actually lease a grave for a couple of decades or more, and then you can pay more if you want to extend it. But then if there's bones still left, they're going to take them and put them into a communal spot, something like that. It's a much more efficient use of land.
Zachary Crockett
Tanya Marsh wouldn't mind seeing this model applied to American soil. Because in the end, all we are is dust in the wind.
Tanya Marsh
Human remains do not last forever. Even if you embalm them and put them in a steel casket inside a concrete vault, they're not going to last forever. You know, we are all organic material. Eventually everything is going to go away and turn into something else.
Zachary Crockett
For the economics of everyday things, I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced produced by me and Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz Rapson. Have you decided what you're gonna do someday?
Tanya Marsh
Oh, honey, I'm going high and dry
Terry Arellano
I wanna be in a mausoleum.
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Host: Zachary Crockett
Date: May 25, 2026
Duration: ~22 minutes
In this episode, Zachary Crockett explores the surprising economics, history, and future of cemeteries. He digs into how cemeteries balance a promise of “forever” against shifting market forces, why burial plots can become speculative real estate, and how the industry adapts as cremation overtakes traditional burial. With insights from cemetery CEO Jeff Lindemann, law professor Tanya Marsh, and cemetery plot broker Terry Arellano, listeners get a panoramic view of what happens after death—from business models to quirky resale markets.
“You might pay as much as $50,000 for a premium plot.” — Jeff Lindemann [01:16]
"Cemeteries are just another real estate use." — Tanya Marsh [04:31]
“Forever means forever until the living decide they want to do something else with that piece of property.” — Tanya Marsh [09:35]
"The only thing you can always be assured of is that cemetery prices will go up every year, regardless of what the market is doing." — Maureen Walton [16:30]
This episode reveals cemeteries as a unique sector where land use, tradition, economics, and the realities of death intersect. From sky-high prices for plots with a view, to the emergence of plot brokers and pressures from the rise of cremation, the promise of “forever” finds itself at odds with the limits of space, money, and changing attitudes. As cities fill and practices evolve, what constitutes a “final” resting place may keep changing right alongside the living.