Real Property Utilization & Disposal
GSA was founded in 1949 with the enactment of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act (Property Act). The Property Act gave GSA the authority to be the Federal Government's real property disposal agent. However, the Federal real estate landscape has dramatically changed since GSA's inception as agency specific real estate authorities have been created. The Office of Real Property Utilization & Disposal has evolved from solely the Property Act disposal agent to a customer-centric government wide realty services provider.
Our Mission:To lead the Federal Government in optimizing its real property portfolio through effective disposition & utilization strategies.
Today we promote sound real property asset management in support of the Administration's objectives, by:
There has been a heightened focus on Federal real property asset management over the past several years. This can be attributed to both executive and legislative actions including: Executive Order 13327, President Obama’s Memorandum of June 10, 2010 and numerous legislative proposals. These actions show a continuing desire for GSA to play a critical role in disposing of unneeded real property and increasing proceeds from the sale of such property.
In 2013, OMB issued the Freeze the Footprint policy (OMB Memorandum M-12-12), where agencies were not allowed to increase the size of the total square footage of their domestic office and warehouse inventory. Freeze the Footprint was the first government-wide policy that required federal agencies to identify offsets (i.e. disposals) of existing property to support any new property acqusitions within a given timeframe. To achieve compliance, agencies were able to offset increases in office or warehouse space with the declaration of the same amount of property as “excess” to GSA. This policy was a success and resulted in a government-wide reduction of 21.4 million square feet in office and warehouse space between 2012 and 2014.
Based on the success of Freeze the Footprint, OMB issued a Reduce the Footprint policy (OMB Memorandum 2015-01) which requires agencies to reduce rather than just freeze their real property footprints over the next several years. The Reduce the Footprint requirements began being implemented and tracked in FY2016.
To help agencies remain compliant with the “Reduce the Footprint” policy and effectively perform their portfolio planning, RPUD offers a number of services at an at-cost business model. RPUD's staff are skilled and experienced professionals, including environmental experts, legal counsel, real estate experts, marketing experts, auctioneers, project managers, and contracting officers, that take pride in getting the best results for their customers. And there are contracting mechanisms in place that agencies can access to support the wide array of services needed to accomplish any utilization or disposal requirements.
The services that RPUD offers to assist agencies includes: real property valuation (appraisals, highest and best use analysis), due diligence (title survey, environmental characterization, condition assessments, targeted asset reviews), transactional services (brokerage services, comprehensive repositioning, community/stakeholder coordination, relocation, exchange, outlease, auction), marketing services (advertising, open houses, website, industry days), NEPA services (catex, EA, EIS, land use planning, historic review), targeted portfolio and market reviews, and training.