Waste of the Day: Selling Federal Government’s Excess Property Could Earn $3 Billion Annually

Uncle Sam is sitting on more real property than any other entity in America. If it sold, the U.S. government could earn billions.

That’s according to Citizens Against Government Waste’s annual report “Prime Cuts,” a list of recommendations to reduce the record national debt.

The organization noted that the U.S. government owns approximately 267,000 buildings and structures covering 1.9 billion square feet of office space.

“Due to a combination of negative incentives and unnecessary red tape, selling federal real estate is a long, costly process,” the report noted. But reforms are needed to unload the unused property and get back taxpayer funds.

When General Services Administration Public Buildings Service reports an unused property as excess, that property is offered to other federal agencies. If no agency wants it, according to Title 40 of the U.S. Code and the McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act, it must be offered to providers of homeless shelters, who can use the property for free.

If shelter operators don’t want it, the property is screened for other public uses and sold for up to a 100 percent discount of market value.

If there’s no possible public use, the property is auctioned and sold.

But that process is upside down, Citizens Against Government Waste argued, “The government should first try to sell the property and give it away only if there is no other alternative.”

Since 2016, the Federal Property Management Reform Act requires the U.S. Postal Service every year to provide a list of properties with available space for federal agencies and establishes a council to help guide and implement an “efficient and effective real property management strategy,” reduce expenses, and determine how to better manage assets and property, the report stated.

It also requires federal agencies to provide an annual list of real property under their control, along with its condition, and whether it’s occupied.

That has shown the 5,066 bathrooms, 16,570 parking lots and garages, more than 1,500 prisons, nearly 17,000 warehouses, 766 hospitals and 2,427 schools, the report stated.

So why not sell it off? It takes years to sell federal property and all the while, taxpayer money is being used to pay the approximately $2 billion each year operating and maintaining buildings, regardless of occupancy, and around $5 billion annually to lease office buildings.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.