Overseas Real Estate

The State Departments owns more than $10 billion in real estate at 200 locations overseas. GAO reviewed State's efforts to identify and sell excess or underused real estate and to use the proceeds for other high-priority real property needs. GAO reported in 1995 (GAO/NSIAD-95-73) on the potential budget savings from selling expensive property in Tokyo and on the problems in State's management of properties abroad. This report (1) identifies real estate at other locations that could possibly be sold to provide money to meet other real estate needs, (2) describes problems that State has had in deciding which properties to dispose of, and (3) explains how State uses the proceeds from the properties it does sell.

GAO found that: (1) from 1990 to 1995, State sold $133 million in real estate, which was a small part of its total excess or underused property; (2) State does not have a standard process for identifying and selling excess or underused real estate; (3) in practice, excess or underused property is not identified or sold without the assistance of an embassy; (4) the use of the funds from property sales is the only incentive that the embassies have to identify and sell excess or underused real estate; (5) State does not ensure that the profits from the sale of property go to its most urgent real estate needs worldwide; and (6) the proceeds from the sale of property are generally allowed to be used by the corresponding embassy.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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