House conservatives leading the Department of Government Efficiency-fueled effort to close federal office space are comfortable violating a basic tenet of investing: buy low, sell high.
Selling federal properties at low prices may be the government’s loss, but it will be someone else’s gain, House Republicans said at a House Oversight DOGE Subcommittee hearing. The panel is the congressional companion to Elon Musk-led DOGE.
“This is a massive real estate auction,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who chairs the subcommittee, said.
Greene and other Republicans shot down warnings that it’s a bad time to sell property.
“You don’t sell into a down market. It’s folly,” Ron Kendall, executive chairman emeritus of the National Federal Development Association, a federal real estate trade group, told the panel Tuesday. “You’re going to get the lowest price possible, if you can move the assets at all.”
Greene told reporters her goal is “reducing the size of the federal government,” including selling properties and cancelling leases.
“When you sell these buildings, you give a good opportunity to an American taxpayer to buy — buy a federal property or buy federal land and turn it into, basically, a tax-generating property,” Greene said.
Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), a member of the DOGE Subcommittee and the Appropriations Committee, agreed.
“Who would benefit from that? Well, it would be the American people,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) said of selling at low prices.
The General Services Administration in March posted 443 “non-core” assets, signaling a willingness to sell the properties, totaling almost 80 million rentable square feet of usable space.
Democrats on the panel said they’re open to reducing the federal government’s real estate footprint, but criticized the approach taken by DOGE.
“The Trump administration is taking a fire sale approach of looting the federal government and stripping its parts to pay for tax cuts,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), the subcommittee’s ranking member, said.
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