Tech entrepreneur Stephen Ehikian has been tapped by the Trump administration to steer the federal government’s 360M SF real estate portfolio.
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The General Services Administration, the government's real estate arm, announced Wednesday afternoon that Ehikian was appointed acting administrator of the agency.
Ehikian will be focused on efficiency in the federal government's footprint, and the GSA's release says he will work closely with billionaire Elon Musk's new Department of Government Efficiency.
The Public Buildings Service, the division of the GSA that handles the government's real estate decisions, also has a new leader: Michael Peters, an investment banking veteran who served as vice president of Honeywell International. The GSA didn't announce his appointment, but Peters is listed on its website as PBS commissioner, and Federal News Network first reported his and Ehikian's appointments.
Peters replaces Elliot Doomes, who was selected as PBS commissioner in October 2023, succeeding Nina Albert when she transitioned to a leadership role in local D.C. government. The PBS commissioner role doesn't require Senate confirmation.
Ehikian replaces Robin Carnahan, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in April 2021. He can serve for 210 days as an acting official and could either be chosen to be the permanent administrator — and need to go through a confirmation process — or be replaced with another nominee.
Ehikian was most recently vice president of AI products at Salesforce. Over his career, he has built and sold two sales and customer service software companies to Salesforce.
“Under the Trump-Vance Administration, I will return the GSA to its core purpose of making government work smarter and faster,” Ehikian said in a statement. “Moving forward, GSA will be laser focused on driving an efficient government and enabling our sister agencies to provide better service to taxpayers at lower costs.”
The GSA didn't respond to requests for comment before publication.
Over the past decade, the GSA has disposed of nearly 11M SF of federally owned space and reduced nearly 18M SF of leased space, it said in December.
But during the past few years, the federal government has accelerated its push to reduce its leased and owned footprint, as about half of federal employees continue to work on a hybrid schedule.
The GSA is consistently leasing less space with each agency renewal and upping the pace at which it offloads property. Three large federal buildings in the nation’s capital came on the chopping block over the past year, in addition to millions more square feet around the country.
The strategy of disposing of owned properties that could tee up redevelopment opportunities in prime locations has been gaining momentum in government real estate circles, former Public Buildings Service commissioners said at a Bisnow event last month. And the effort to exchange owned for leased space is expected to accelerate in this administration.
Multiple government leasing officials told Bisnow Tuesday that the issue of offloading expensive and underutilized federal property now has bipartisan support and the Trump administration is in a good position to oversee the effort on a more accelerated timeline. At the same time, it is unclear what impact President Donald Trump’s executive order for federal employees to return to the office full time will have on the future of the federal footprint.
UPDATE, JAN. 23, 1:45 P.M. ET: This story has been updated with additional context on the GSA's real estate strategy.
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