{
  "id": "R41240",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "R41240",
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  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
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      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 376190,
      "date": "2011-01-12",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-07T01:11:57.772343",
      "title": "Real Property Disposition: Overview and Issues for the 112th Congress ",
      "summary": "Federal executive branch agencies hold an extensive real property portfolio that includes nearly 900,000 buildings and structures, and 41 million acres of land worldwide. These assets have been acquired over a period of decades to help agencies fulfill their diverse missions. The government\u2019s portfolio encompasses properties with a range of uses, including barracks, health clinics, warehouses, laboratories, national parks, boat docks, and offices. As agencies\u2019 missions change over time, so, too, do their real property needs, thereby rendering some assets less useful or unneeded altogether. \nReal property disposition is the process by which federal agencies identify and then transfer, donate, or sell facilities and land they no longer need. Disposition is an important asset management function because the costs of maintaining unneeded properties can be substantial, consuming billions of dollars that might be applied to pressing real property needs, such as acquiring new space and repairing existing facilities, or to other policy issues, such as reducing the national debt. \nAudits of agency real property portfolios have found that the government holds thousands of unneeded properties, and must spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to maintain them. Agencies have said that their disposal efforts are often hampered by legal and budgetary disincentives, and competing stakeholder interests. In addition, Congress is limited in its capacity to conduct oversight of the disposal process because it lacks access to reliable, comprehensive real property data. The government\u2019s inability to efficiently dispose of its unneeded property is a major reason that federal real property management has been identified by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) as a \u201chigh-risk\u201d area since 2003.\nThis report begins with an explanation of the real property disposal process, and then discusses some of the factors that have made disposition inefficient and costly. It then examines real property legislation introduced in the 111th Congress that would have addressed those problems, including the Federal Real Property Disposal Enhancement Act of 2009 (H.R. 2495), S.Amdt. 1042, and the President\u2019s FY2011 budget request. The report concludes with policy options for enhancing both the disposal process and congressional oversight of it.",
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      "typeId": "REPORTS",
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}