On Tuesday, the General Services Administration (GSA) released a list of over 400 federal buildings and properties slated for sale, including critical locations such as the FBI headquarters, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Justice. Just hours later, 123 properties, featuring prominent sites like the J. Edgar Hoover Building and Veterans Administration buildings in Washington, DC, were taken off the list. By Wednesday, the complete collection of properties had vanished from the GSA’s website.
WIRED has developed a map and a searchable table detailing the government properties that were briefly available for sale, along with the political representatives associated with each property.
WIRED integrated two different datasets to construct this map: the original list of “non-core” properties published—and subsequently withdrawn—by the GSA, and the Inventory of Owned and Leased Properties (IOLP). The GSA characterizes non-core properties as buildings and facilities deemed “not essential to government operations.” In a press release about the list, the agency promoted that these sales would provide “savings to the American taxpayer.” The IOLP, accessible to the public, contains detailed information regarding GSA-owned and leased properties across the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa.
Among the properties originally marked for sale are historically significant sites such as Chicago’s Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed John C. Kluczynski Federal Building and the Custom House, an Art Deco structure covering a city block in Philadelphia’s Old City. Other properties, while less prominent, remain noteworthy, including the Martinsburg Computing Center in Kearneysville, West Virginia, which the IRS describes as housing its “individual and corporate tax administration master file database,” and the Central Heating Plant in Washington, DC, responsible for providing heated and chilled water to government buildings, museums, and national monuments. (The GSA has since stated that not all buildings are on the market, but the agency has consistently varied its message across different internal documents and communications to staff members.)
The GSA, an independent agency of the government, oversees government IT and a significant portion of the federal real estate assets. Recently, the agency has faced significant upheaval due to forced resignations and workforce reductions, which includes the dissolution of 18F, a GSA unit dedicated to improving government efficiency. Reports indicate that the GSA’s Public Buildings Service (PBS) intends to decrease its workforce by 63 percent, affecting approximately 3,600 employees in total. Associates of Elon Musk are also present within the GSA, including Technology Transformation Services director Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer, and X employee Nicole Hollander. Additionally, a group of young DOGE technologists has gained access to the agency.
WIRED reported in February that GSA staff were instructed to sell off more than 500 federal buildings, comprising facilities that house government agencies and the offices of US senators. The proposed list categorized these properties into “core” and “non-core” assets, identifying the “non-core” properties for sale.
A note from the original list indicates that the agency’s goal is to eventually reduce its “owned real estate footprint by 50 percent and the number of buildings by 70 percent.” The reductions are targeted at the non-core general office space of the portfolio, which can be replaced in the private market as needed. Moving forward, all non-core buildings will be disposed of, with their occupants transitioned into lease agreements.
