Trump, 443 federal mülkü satmayı planlıyor
Trump plans to sell 443 federal property
Published on
The U.S. government is considering selling an extensive portfolio of properties located in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, as part of President Donald Trump's campaign to shrink the federal workforce and the buildings he occupies.
The inventory of 443 “non-cores” assets released by the General Services Administration (GSA) on Tuesday include many of the major commercial buildings that house local and regional offices for federal agencies and provide services for taxpayers, Social Security buyers, farmers and workers.
These structures totally represent about 80 million square feet of leasable (7.4 million square meters) of usable space; that is, more or less 12 times the size of the Pentagon.
GSA estimates that the sale of these structures could save more than $430 million in annual operating costs, which is a key focus for Trump and government efforts to reduce spending.
They are not on sale yet, but the publication of the list reflects the management's intention to sell state-owned real estate. Michael Peters, a former investment banker who was brought to head of the Public Buildings Service by Trump, said, “The fact that something is on the list of non-cores does not mean that that thing is for sale. But if someone puts an offer on the table, we will evaluate it," he said.
Given the unique characteristics of each property and market, it is not clear how valuable the government's buildings can be, or even what to expect clearly in a sale.
In general, commercial real estate is still affected by high interest rates and the double hit caused by the Covid pandemic. According to Bloomberg's real estate analysis firm Green Street, office prices fell 36% from the 2022 peak by January.
Remote work has also reduced the demand for office space, leaving more empty space in many big cities, but turning commercial buildings into residential use is difficult at a time when construction and financing costs are high.
As Peters told the Public Buildings Reform Board in January, commercial tenants these days prefer new spaces with more facilities; most of the buildings in the federal portfolio are old and may need significant repair.
Peters, "Deferred maintenance is reflected in the state of these buildings. If you had visited many of them, you wouldn't even want to be there with your dog, let alone your working environment," he claimed.
About a third of the buildings on the list are located in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, but they have a disproportionate share of square meters, partly because the headquarters of large institutions are there.
Among the departments whose buildings are put up for sale are Agriculture, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Justice and Veteran Affairs.
The FBI also has properties among the buildings. The General Services Administration even recommends the sale of its headquarters.
The Trump administration is exploring moving institutions out of the District of Columbia (formal name for Washington, DC) to save rent and salaries.
These moves will threaten the already difficult DC office market, and Peters said GSA should be “very thoughtful” about its properties here, given the federal government's massive impact on the commercial real estate market.
As such, the share of leasable office spaces in the DC was about 24% at the end of 2024, higher than the city's pre-pandemic availability rate and above the current level in Manhattan.
Other buildings available for sale include New Bedford, Massachusetts; historic properties such as 19th-century customs houses in Portland, Maine, and Norfolk, Virginia, where the U.S. once collected import taxes that financed the federal government before income taxes.
But some of them, John A. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Newer buildings, including a district office for the Volpe Transportation Systems Center and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Thomasville, Georgia.
While the GSA list is notable as it includes some of the country's most well-known public buildings, the government's move to shrink its real estate inventory has been going on for more than a decade.
The government has sold more than 1,000 properties with a total of 24 million square meters since 2015. In December, the Biden administration proposed to sell eight federal buildings with a total of 1.5 million square meters.