The mission of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is to foster innovation and competitiveness by providing high-quality and timely examination of patent and trademark applications, guiding domestic and international intellectual property (IP) policy, and delivering IP information and education worldwide. The agency advises the president, the secretary of commerce, and other federal agencies on IP policy, protection, […]
You may have to squint to see it in the graph above but the federal lease inventory controlled by GSA has declined by a little more than a million square feet over the past year. This should be no surprise because in 2012 OMB issued its “Freeze the Footprint” memorandum making it clear that the federal real estate inventory […]
The federal debt held by the public in the second quarter of 2014 was $12.57 trillion. That equates to 72.6% of GDP, down slightly from the post-WWII peak of 74.0% that was recorded in the first quarter of this year. This slight reduction is the only good news that will be reported for the remainder of this article. Rapidly […]
The predominant federal leasing trend since the Great Recession is that the GSA-leased space inventory is shrinking. Though this overall inventory reduction has been occurring at a relatively moderate pace, the number of long-term leased properties has fallen much more rapidly, as we’ve reported previously. The decline is because GSA is still entering into many […]
Recently, pre-solicitation notices posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website (FBO) have been indicating GSA’s desire to enter into longer lease contracts. FBO notices advertise GSA’s requirements for upcoming procurements, including the length of lease term that the government is willing to execute. Therefore, these FBO notices are a good leading indicator of future leasing […]
The GSA property market has been characterized by a relative scarcity of long-term leases. This unwillingness of federal agencies to commit to long-term contracts is due to budget distress, mission uncertainty and challenges complying with OMB mandates to reconfigure workplaces, consolidate and downsize. Though all of those factors still persist, GSA, as acquisition authority for these agencies, now […]
The government right now is, well, it’s in turmoil. That’s voiced as an opinion but it feels like actual, quantifiable fact. The United States is still fighting its way out of a deep and prolonged recession, the government has been operating under a series of continuing resolutions for nearly two years, the budget faces sequestration, Congress […]
Looking at remaining term of federal leases relative to building age, an interesting pattern emerges: the leases appear in “waves”. The scattergraph above shows office buildings that are at least 85% leased by federal tenants. We’ve plotted every building based on its age and the remaining term of its government-leased space. The size of each dot corresponds with the […]
It is a well-accepted fact that the federal leased space market is shrinking. This is troublesome, yet for investors the real question has been whether the shrinking inventory has also made investment opportunities more scarce. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. The graph above shows the total number of buildings at each point in time over the past […]
Traveling as much as we do to represent national owners of government-leased properties, it’s inevitable that one of the federal agencies we encounter most is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The agency’s current procurement for a long term lease to consolidate its headquarters in Northern Virginia has brought it to mind even more than usual lately. A component […]
The Public Buildings Service (PBS) is the largest public real estate organization in the United States, under whose aegis more than 1.2 million federal employees are provided with workspaces. The agency, a branch of the federal General Services Administration (GSA), is responsible for building and maintaining federal properties through contracts that have ranged from $65,000 […]
How much office and other space does the US Secret Service occupy? That turns out to be a difficult question with a simple answer: It’s secret. Its Washington headquarters, a building on H Street, looks nondescript, save for the radio antennas and microwave dishes studding the roof, and its interior tells the casual visitor at […]
The last round of Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC) was announced in 2005 and completed officially last year. In a press conference today, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that DoD is planning for another BRAC round as part of the FY 2013 Defense budget. This round is meant to accommodate an expected $487 billion in […]
St. Elizabeths Campus Rendering (courtesy of GSA) The original $3.45 billion plan to consolidate the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters at a 4.5 million-square-foot campus on the site of the former St. Elizabeths Hospital—moving more than 14,000 workers from more than 180 separate offices and reducing the department’s leased spaces in the Washington […]
