The Trump administration took a tentative step back into the real estate market on Friday, beginning the process to list eight properties for possible sale after scuttling a far more ambitious plan to shrink the federal portfolio earlier this month.
The eight properties listed Friday were far more in keeping with the routine disposal process run by the General Services Administration, which often acts as a landlord for other federal agencies.
“To reduce costs for taxpayers & better serve agencies, @USGSA is rightsizing the federal real estate portfolio. We’re accelerating the disposition of eight federal assets, consistent with all applicable laws, with more coming,” Stephen Ehikian, the GSA’s acting administrator said in a post on X.
Among the properties listed for sale were a Social Security Trust Fund building in Bridgeton, New Jersey and a federal building in the Maryland suburbs near Washington that the GSA had previously announced it would seek to offload.
Missing were the agency headquarters, architectural jewels and other high-profile buildings the GSA listed earlier this month, when it solicited offers on 443 “non-core” assets. Within hours, that list shrunk to 320. The following day, it took the remaining properties off the market entirely.
The episode was one of many starts and stops in President Donald Trump’s second administration, in which billionaire presidential adviser Elon Musk has imposed his move-fast-and-break-things philosophy on downsizing the federal government.
But the original list caught many in Washington off guard — including some members of Congress who not only represent the communities where federal buildings are located but are also tenants in some of those same buildings. A massive sale by the government could imperil already shaky commercial real estate markets.
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