Federal Real Property Management

This guide is designed to provide a useful environmental reference for each activity in the real property management process. It covers a wide variety of topics including management issues such as acquisition, leasing, licensing and disposal, as well as day-to-day operational and maintenance issues such as air quality, PCB management, building cleaning and waste management. Each stage of the life cycle (planning, acquisition and disposal, design, construction, commissioning, demolition and dismantling, operation and maintenance) is covered in a separate chapter, which gives a brief description of the significance of the subject and the approach the federal government takes to it, describes the process and procedures in detail, and contains titles of related legislation, policies, regulations, codes, standards, specifications and advisory publications.

Unreliable real property data has been a long-standing problem for federal landholding agencies. Under the President¿s real property initiative, agencies are being held accountable for, among other things, improving the accuracy of their real property inventory and disposing of unneeded property. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the fourth largest landholding agency, uses the Real Estate Management Information System (REMIS) for recording its civil works inventory. The author was asked to determine whether REMIS could provide reliable information on the Corps¿ civil works land disposals from FY 1996 through 2006. Includes recommendations. Charts and tables.

In Jan. 2003, fed. real property was designated as a high-risk area, citing the gov¿t. over-reliance on costly, long-term leasing. Building ownership often costs less than operating leases, esp. for long-term space needs. This report identifies: (1) the profile of domestically held, federally leased space incl. the overall amount and type of space that agencies lease, and any related trends; (2) the factors that drive agencies to lease space that may be more cost-effective to own; and (3) any actions taken by the admin. and alternative approaches proposed to address this issue. The author interviewed officials from the GSA, the OMB, and the USPS. Also reviewed 10 building leases that were among those with the largest dollar value. Includes recommendations. Tables.

Many fed. agencies (FA) hold real property (RP) that they do not need. Some FA have been granted authorities to enter into enhanced use leases (EUL) -- long-term agree. with public and private entities for the use of fed. RP, resulting in cash and/or in-kind consideration for the FA -- or to retain the proceeds from the sale of RP. This report reviews how FA are using their disposal authorities: (1) what authorities the 10 largest RP holding FA have to enter into EULs and retain proceeds from the sale of RP; (2) the extent to which FA with authority to retain proceeds sold RP and how they used the proceeds; and (3) the relationship between FA having the authority to enter into EULs or retain sales proceeds and the amount of RP that they retained or sold.