DOGE Disbands 8 Months Early, With Most Lease Terminations Rescinded
The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, which set out to minimize the federal government’s commercial real estate footprint, dissipated ahead of its July 2026 mandate.
The department spearheaded by Elon Musk, known as DOGE, is no longer a centralized entity and its status “doesn’t exist,” Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters.
DOGE aimed to help reduce waste and slash spending across the federal government. In March, it promised to sell as many as 443 buildings and vacate another 10M SF worth of leases from the General Services Administration, which oversees the federal government’s real estate portfolio.
Almost immediately, those plans were drawn back. There were fewer than 7M SF of leases targeted when Musk departed Washington, D.C., in late May. The number is now below 5M SF.
The latest update on JLL’s DOGE Federal Lease Termination Tracker shows that as of July 30, 384 leases have been terminated. That totals 4.8M SF, or about 2.7% of GSA-leased inventory in the U.S. There have been 484 leases, totaling 6.2M SF, reinstated.
Washington, D.C., has seen the most significant impact, with 14 leases totaling 1.5M SF terminated, accounting for 8.7% of the GSA inventory there.
Only four leases totaling 355K SF had their terminations rescinded in D.C., per the tracker. The district lost 850K SF of federal government office occupancy in the first half of this year.
DOGE lease cancellations were already causing uncertainty in the CMBS market in August, as government-leased buildings had long been seen as a safe option for investors, according to a Yale School of Management study.
“The DOGE lease terminations function not just as cost-cutting measures, but as systemic shocks with the potential to undermine CRE stability through both direct and indirect channels,” the study stated.
DOGE planned to continue its shock-and-awe lease termination campaign after Musk left. President Donald Trump signed an executive order stating that DOGE would remain in effect through July 2026.
But the agency quietly disbanded while other prominent DOGE employees shifted to new government positions.
Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, was a DOGE volunteer who worked to streamline the retirement process. He is now heading the National Design Studio, Reuters reported. Trump created the agency through an August executive order to beautify government websites.
In March, Acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason became an adviser to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Though she still held her DOGE position, she is publicly focused on the HHS role, according to Reuters.
DOGE said it cut tens of billions of dollars in expenditures, but Reuters reported that verification was impossible.
The government-wide hiring freeze is also over, Kupor said.
