The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency has walked back lease terminations on 135 federal agency offices it had sought to end.
DOGE updated its public list of terminations and savings overnight Tuesday, removing leases totaling 2.17 million square feet from a tally it's maintained over the previous weeks. The new list reduces the amount in annual rent payments DOGE has claimed to save by $57.83 million — that's more than one-10th of the estimated $500 million in savings it previously estimated.
Some of DOGE’s actions to slash spending and reduce the government workforce in the first two months of President Donald Trump’s second term have been slowed as federal agencies and courts review the decisions.
In the case of lease terminations, the deals removed from DOGE's list affect many offices open to the public. The leases that appear to no longer be at risk include 50 Social Security offices and 24 IRS offices, according to the data DOGE has published as reviewed by CoStar News.
The General Services Administration, which oversees federal real estate procurement, has been reassessing the termination postings affecting public offices.
“GSA is reviewing all options to optimize the federal footprint and building utilization,” a GSA spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CoStar News. “We are actively managing lease contracts by leveraging existing contract cancellation rights. As leases enter their soft term, we are sending letters of intent to customer agencies to inform them GSA is considering lease termination (thereby exercising GSA’s contractual rights as agreed upon with our lessors). Actively managing leases gives GSA the opportunity to work closely with our partner agencies on their evolving and longer-term needs and will often allow us to enhance space utilization and secure better terms for the government — including better pricing.”
Of the lease terminations not on the latest list posted on the DOGE website, CoStar News was able to identify 96 of them by property address when matched against the GSA’s inventory of leased space. Of that group, the average lease term remaining on the leases was three years. Many of the agencies have been in their locations for 10 years or more.
The information coming from DOGE has disrupted real estate markets, particularly in Washington, D.C.
“The limited information being provided by the GSA is pretty chaotic,” Darian LeBlanc, executive vice chairman of Cushman & Wakefield in Washington, told CoStar News in an email. “The real estate community simply wants accurate and timely information from the GSA about the leases that are housed within the assets that they own. The inconsistent information makes it difficult, if not impossible, for real estate investors to develop plans for the future of their real estate. This ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach on the part of the federal government is harmful and costly to all parties.”
Earlier this month, the GSA briefly posted a list of more than 400 properties it planned to sell across the country, before taking it down without explanation. The properties were identified as “non-core” assets, totaling nearly 80 million rentable square feet. The GSA said the divestment could potentially save more than $430 million in annual operating costs.
The GSA is still considering offloading several properties, but those that could be sold are undergoing a screening process expected to be completed by June, the GSA told CoStar News.
This story was updated March 19 with a comment from the GSA’s national press office.