Nashville IRS Building for Sale After DOGE Kills Lease

One of Tennessee’s largest former federal offices is on the market amid the Trump administration’s massive downsizing.

Global Net Lease listed the five-story office building at 127 International Drive in Franklin, a 135,000-square-foot property built specifically for the Internal Revenue Service in 2012, the Nashville Business Journal reported.

The listing comes after the Department of Government Efficiency terminated its less than a month ago. The lease was valued at $4.6 million annually and was expected to run until 2032. That comes to $32.2 million, assuming the lease hasn’t been paid for this year.

The agency’s departure as the sole tenant in the building has created one of the highest-profile availabilities in the Franklin submarket.

The building is in Cool Springs, a corporate corridor about 20 miles south of downtown Nashville, and includes 472 parking spaces. It’s being marketed as a plug-and-play headquarters opportunity by brokers from JLL.

DOGE, created by executive order under President Donald Trump and led by billionaire Elon Musk, has targeted hundreds of federal properties for lease cancellation, focusing on those it deemed underutilized.

The property’s owner, a subsidiary of New York–based Global Net Lease, paid $43.25 million for the asset in 2014, a record at the time at $319 per square foot.

That valuation may now be difficult to recapture: Franklin’s office vacancy rate was 24 percent in 2023, and while Nashville overall has led the nation in office demand, suburban markets like Cool Springs are more exposed to pullouts and shifting tenant preferences.

The listing underscores how DOGE’s aggressive office downsizing is reshaping regional markets. The Franklin IRS building is one of five Middle Tennessee assets affected by the initiative, which had axed nearly 750 leases totaling 9.5 million square feet nationwide, as of March.

— Judah Duke