Federal Government Renews SEC Lease in Los Angeles

The General Services Administration is backing away from abandoning some Los Angeles office space.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, through the GSA, has renewed its lease at 444 South Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles through September 2029, CoStar reported. The SEC is the largest tenant at the 48-story building, occupying nearly 58,000 square feet of offices.

At the same time, the GSA signed a 10-year lease renewal for the SEC’s 44,000-square-feet offices in Philadelphia’s Center City.

The move comes after the push earlier this year from the General Services Administration, the real estate arm of the federal government, to trim down office space across the country as part of cost-cutting efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

At the height of its office shavedown, DOGE said it had canceled or restructured nearly 100 federal leases across the country totaling more than 2 million square feet of offices. It was estimated to save taxpayers about $80 million.

By the end of February, DOGE predicted about $100 million worth of lease reductions, which could rise as the government has another $385 million of office leases eligible for elimination by the end of this year. In the spring, DOGE slowed down its lease-cutting efforts, removing approximately 2.2 million square feet of leases that reduced the amount DOGE claimed to save by $57.8 million.

The final figure of how much money DOGE’s efforts have saved the federal government is yet to be determined.

“I appreciate GSA’s partnership in ensuring the SEC has appropriate, cost-effective space to meet its mission in these locations and around the country,” Paul Atkins, chairman of the SEC, said of the renewals, Reuters reported.

The General Services Administration pays approximately $5 billion a year to rent 144 million square feet of offices for use by various government agencies nationwide, per CoStar. In the 2024 fiscal year, the SEC alone paid more than $30 million for rental space.

The SEC has been working with the GSA to downsize or terminate some office lease deals when they expire as part of its cost-cutting measures since before DOGE came into the picture.

Outside of Washington, D.C., Los Angeles leads the country in the amount of federal office space cut as part of the post-DOGE push. — Chris Malone Méndez