White House Releases Locations of Excess Properties

Interesting read here today about all these excess properties that we own. Is our government actually considering doing something about reducing expenses and waste???.....hmmmm

May 4, 2011 - 8:16am

The White House today will send its plan to Congress to eliminate more than 14,000 excess properties held by civilian agencies.

An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they didn't get permission to speak ahead of the announcement, said the proposal would let agencies not only deal with properties designated as excess but also "sell off other properties that haven't yet been designated excess where red tape, politics and financial barriers have blocked sale for too long."

Along with the legislative proposal, the White House released a new map of where more than 7,000 of the 12,000 properties exist. All the properties total more than 24 million square feet.

and deeper into the article:

For too long, the American people's hard-earned tax dollars have gone to waste, funding empty buildings and holding on to valuable properties the government no longer needs," the official said. "That is something that shouldn't be tolerated at any time, but especially with this challenging fiscal environment, it's unacceptable."

Read more at the source here: www.federalnewsradio.com...

And they are even providing a map of locations of those excess properties here:

Excess Federal Properties Interactive Map
The Federal Government is the biggest property owner in the United States, and billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted each year on government properties that are no longer needed. The President has proposed a Civilian Property Realignment Board to help the Federal Government cut through red tape and politics to sell or get rid of property it no longer needs, saving taxpayers $15 billion over the first three years after the Board is fully up and running.

There are roughly 14,000 buildings and structures currently designated as excess and thousands of others that are underutilized. These properties range from sheds to underutilized office buildings and empty warehouses. Over 7,000 of these properties are plotted on this map, zoom in to see Excess Properties in your state and around the country.

Source: www.whitehouse.gov...

is this their idea of a garage sale?

You can combine this information with the fact that we have more than 3 times the amount of empty homes in america as america has homeless people and realize that the whole "homeless" bullcrap could be immediately elimated.

It's senseless and it's waste, and it's shameful.

Originally posted by Jomina
You can combine this information with the fact that we have more than 3 times the amount of empty homes in america as america has homeless people

A quick google search later, and the number of vacant houses is somewhere around 18.4 million. (depending on what number you believe)
The number of homeless people is about 700000.

Its much like food. People starve to death on this planet not because of the lack of food, but due to reasons related to the uneven distribution of it.

Where the hell did all those people go if there are 18 million empty houses?

Originally posted by NE1911
Where the hell did all those people go if there are 18 million empty houses?

I am not sure where the poster alfa1 got the 18 million figure. It looks like the estimated range from the source below is somewhere from 1.45 to 3.5 million vacant homes in the U.S. which of course is still too many.

Vacant Non-Foreclosed and Foreclosed Houses Estimated at Over 3M

May 4, 2011 By Foreclosure News

The number of vacant foreclosed houses and empty non-foreclosed homes has been estimated to be over three million. According to a report by Goldman Sachs, residential vacancy in the U.S. is way above normal seasonal figures. However, housing formation is showing signs of increasing, albeit at a very slow pace.

With so much single family and multi family homes for sale remaining unsold, housing market analysts stated that it is not surprising that vacancy levels have escalated in the past few years. The report from Goldman Sachs estimated that the number of vacant housing units in the country stands at around 3.5 million. Reports have revealed that the estimate was based on the data presented by the U.S. Census Bureau.

However, other reports put the estimate at a much lower number. According to several other reports, the number of excess vacant homes in the U.S. as of April 2011 stands between 1.45 million and 2.45 million. Analysts who favor this lower estimate claimed that even with huge amounts of existing properties offered at foreclosure auctions, the housing stock of the nation will likely decline within a year since very few residential units will be added within 2011. They predict that excess stock of residences in the U.S. will dip within the range of 750,000 to 1.7 million by April of next year.

Source: outerbanksrealestateforeclosures.com...

And to answer your question, I presume many persons who formerly occupied those homes are now living with relatives or friends, some are in shelters temporarily, or homeless camps, others are just living on the street, and/or in abandoned or condemned buildings.

My guess is that some of these federal government excess buildings will probably be purchased by various cities or states and/or non profit organizations at fire sale prices, with the agreement that they will be used for the homeless.

And others will probably be purchased at less than their fair value by real estate moguls who will turn around and sell them again at a huge profit.