Government Reverses Hundreds of Lease Terminations

At first, the federal government met resistance in cutting its real estate footprint. In more than 100 cases, it’s reversing its planned terminations.

The General Services Administration, which manages the government’s real estate holdings, is backtracking on the cancellation of 117 leases, the New York Times reported. Among the spaces getting a reprieve are an Energy Department office in New Mexico that manages a nuclear waste repository and an office used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for hurricane response in Florida.

Lawmakers and agency officials have worked to slow or stop lease terminations, expressing worry about vital functions and the government’s own return-to-office mandate. One lawmaker in Oklahoma worked directly with Donald Trump’s administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to salvage several agency offices in the Sooner State.

More leases are still being canceled than saved from the scrap heap. The GSA has sent out 827 termination notices since the start of Trump’s second term and only the 100-plus letters rescinding said notices, according to the agency.

The reversals are adding more confusion to the post-inauguration chaos in federal government-related real estate. For instance, Musk’s team has already claimed that it cut 793 leases and is saving the country approximately $500 million annually. But those lease cancelations don’t match the GSA’s termination notices, and officials aren’t providing updated lists on what deals are canceled and where. Three leases in Oklahoma supposedly saved from the chopping block still appear on the DOGE website of canceled leases.

There’s also the “non-core” asset inventory posted by the GSA two weeks ago. The agency documented 443 properties seemingly “designed for disposal” by the federal government, only for the inventory to disappear the following day; it has yet to reappear.

The inventory spanned nearly 80 million square feet of rentable space across the country. The GSA forecasted more than $430 million of annual operating cost savings if the entire inventory were to be offloaded.

— Holden Walter-Warner