Federal Real Property: Key Acquisition and Management Obstacles

With an enormous real estate portfolio of almost 450,000 buildings, 3 billion square feet of space, and 650 million acres of land worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the United States Government is one of the worlds largest property owners. The government leases another 200 million square feet of building space and 900,000 acres of land. This real estate is under the custody and control of at least 30 federal agencies and overseen by numerous congressional committees and subcommittees. Public buildings and land are an integral part of carrying out federal operations. They should be viewed and used as capital resource tools to support agencies goals and missions. They should be strategically acquired, managed, and disposed of so that taxpayers return on investment is maximized. This is especially challenging in todays environment. About half of the governments office buildings are over 40 years old and were designed and located to meet the needs of an earlier era. GAOs extensive body of work in the real property management area has identified five key obstacles that inhibit the governments ability to acquire and manage real property mission assets in a more cost-effective, businesslike manner. These obstacles are 1 GSAs monopoly in providing office space and its preoccupation with day-to-day real property operations, 2 a lack of strategic focus and needed information for capital spending decisions, 3 poor asset management practices, 4 Federal Buildings Fund shortfalls, and 5 budget scorekeeping rules that are biased in favor of operating leases over real property ownership. Reforms have been proposed or are being studied by GAO and others to remove these obstacles. GAO senses that the new leadership team at GSA is open to fresh thing abou these issues and that there is also a broader interst in Congress concerning public interest could produce a fundamental reassessment of public buildings policy.