DOGE Reveals New Information On 100 Federal Lease 'Cancellations'
The Department of Government Efficiency says it has terminated about 100 leases totaling 2.3M SF across the country.
A list of “lease cancellations” was posted on DOGE’s official government website Monday evening under its “Wall of Receipts,” which is designed to provide public updates on the agency’s cost-cutting efforts.
The list names the agency, city and square footage for each lease DOGE says it has terminated, but it doesn't give the addresses of properties. It also lists the annual contract value for each lease — which total $78.8M — and the cost savings to the government, which DOGE says total $144.6M.
DOGE's site says it will update its cost savings twice per week initially and eventually in real time.
Most of the leases listed are smaller than 10K SF, but there are 10 totaling more than 50K SF and four of more than 100K SF.
The leases span dozens of states, with the most in the D.C. area, which has 13 entries — 11 in the District proper and two in Arlington, Virginia.
The General Services Administration, which manages the federal government’s real estate portfolio, didn’t respond to Bisnow’s request for comment on the lease terminations.
Lucy Kitchin, who heads Transwestern's government services group, said that from her initial analysis, the terminations in the D.C. area are all leases that were set to expire in 2025 and 2026.
“These were probably not surprises for the building owners, given that typical negotiations for GSA leases that are expiring commence at the latest 12 months prior to expiration but typically 24 to 18 months prior,” she said.
The largest lease on DOGE's list is an 845K SF termination for the Department of Labor.
The GSA's online inventory of leases shows a lease of that exact size at 2 Massachusetts Ave. NE, a building across from Union Station where the Bureau of Labor Statistics is headquartered.
DOGE says the Labor Department termination will be effective May 14, the day the lease was set to expire. It says the cancellation will save the government just over $7M.
The second largest on DOGE's list is also in D.C.: 259K SF for the Federal Trade Commission. The GSA's leasing database shows a lease of that size at Constitution Center at 400 Seventh St. SW.
That lease already expired in January, and the GSA has three other leases at the property totaling 302K SF, according to its database. DOGE says the FTC termination, which is marked as “true termination — lease backfill,” represents no cost savings.
The D.C.-area lease cancellations also include 60K SF for the Department of Homeland Security’s office for the management undersecretary, which the GSA database shows is at 800 North Capitol St. NW and expired this month. Another 50K SF cancellation for DHS appears to be a lease at 1616 Fort Meyer Drive in Arlington that expired in January.
DHS is in the process of consolidating its agencies into a new headquarters at the St. Elizabeths West campus in D.C.’s Ward 8.
The DOGE list includes a 125K SF lease in Fairfield, Ohio, for the National Archives Center. That lease was set to expire in November, according to the GSA database. DOGE's note on the lease says the agency vacated the building.
It also includes a 120K SF lease in Atlanta for the Department of Health and Human Services, which the GSA database says was set to expire in March 2026. DOGE says the cancellation is effective as of May, which it says saves the government just over $2M.
The lease cancellations are part of the effort from President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE to make substantial cuts to federal spending.
Over the past week, the Trump administration has laid off thousands of federal employees across a range of agencies. The forced reduction in the federal workforce comes after another 75,000 employees took Trump's deferred resignation offer, which closed last week.
At the same time, the Trump administration is mandating the federal employees that remain to return to in-person work. Agencies are in the process of rolling out their timelines for workers to return full time.
The mandate is already creating confusion among employees, as some government offices don't have enough workspaces for their full employee base to come in daily, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
