DOGE Has Walked Back More Than Half Of Its Claimed Real Estate Cuts
Upon taking office, President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency zeroed in on federal office leases as part of its effort to cut spending.
Six weeks into the new administration, DOGE claimed to have terminated 748 leases — a move it said was saving the federal government $660M.
Over the last two months, it has quietly slashed those numbers, according to an analysis reported Wednesday by nonprofit news organization NOTUS.
Today, DOGE says it has terminated 563 leases totaling $262M in cost savings, less than half of the prior claim.
The leases that were originally listed as terminated but are no longer include two IRS offices of 135K SF and 100K SF, an 81K SF Securities and Exchange Commission space and a 72K SF lease for the Fish and Wildlife Service, NOTUS reported.
The publication also found leases that DOGE claims to have terminated but that were actually canceled before the agency was formed.
It is unclear what role the General Services Administration, which acts as the government’s real estate arm, has with regard to the cancellations, but it has reported slightly different numbers than DOGE.
The GSA did include the lease cancellations and cost savings in a list of accomplishments it touted in the first 100 days of the Trump administration. In a press release issued April 30, the GSA said it had canceled “595 vacant or underutilized leases” amounting to $298M in future lease obligations.
On that same day, the DOGE website showed its cancellation total at 643 leases totaling $311M in cost savings, according to NOTUS.
The GSA didn't respond to Bisnow's request for comment.
DOGE announced its first three lease cancellations a week after Trump was sworn in. By Feb. 3, DOGE was touting 22 lease cancellations totaling $44.6M in savings.
Then, on Feb. 18, nearly 100 lease terminations were posted to DOGE’s new website touting its cost-saving measures on the site’s “Wall of Receipts.”
The peak came on March 4 when DOGE took credit for 748 lease cancellations and $660M in savings. But just weeks later, it had reversed 135 terminations totaling 2.2M SF.
JLL’s DOGE lease termination tracker shows that DOGE’s most recent termination count of 563 leases equates to 6.7M SF, or 3.8% of all the space GSA leases.
In April, billionaire Elon Musk, who has headed DOGE since its inception, said he would be stepping back from his role at the agency starting this month to focus more on electric-car maker Tesla.
“The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place and working in the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done,” he told analysts on Tesla's first-quarter earnings call.
