Congress is giving a small, independent agency more time to identify underutilized buildings the federal government no longer needs.

Lawmakers created the Public Buildings Reform Board when it passed the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act in December 2016. The board helps the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, identify properties that agencies no longer need, and to sell or repurpose them.

Last Friday, President Joe Biden signed a slew of bills targeting underutilized office space as part of a water infrastructure bill. The omnibus package includes the FASTA Reform Act, which extends the tenure of the PBRB through December 2026.

The PBRB was originally scheduled to sunset in May 2025. The extension gives the board more time to identify underutilized federal buildings, and recommend that GSA sell or offload them.

Paul Walden, the board’s executive director, told Federal News Network in an email that “the board is very excited that we’ve been extended to the end of 2026 and that we have the opportunity to present another round of recommendations.”

The FASTA Reform Act also gives the board access to Federal Real Property Council meetings chaired by OMB, and would allow agencies to receive the proceeds from building sales sooner. It also requires PBRB to submit a report to Congress on federal properties that should be sold.

The board began its six-year run in 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of a hybrid federal workforce widened the scope of its mission.

Members of the board say they see a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to reshape the federal government’s real estate footprint and repurpose underutilized federal office buildings in major cities across the U.S.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-Mo.) said in a statement that the new legislation will “help shrink the size of the federal footprint, reduce hurdles to eliminating unused space, and improve the security of our federal buildings.”

“The GSA reforms now signed into law focus on improving our management of federal real estate and have the potential to save the taxpayer billions of dollars by setting benchmarks for space utilization, directing the sale or consolidation of unused space, and strengthening congressional oversight of federal building projects,” Graves said.

GSA has sold most of the properties that the board flagged in their first round of recommendations. But OMB blocked the board’s second round of recommendations from moving forward.

PBRB is working on its third round of sale and disposal recommendations. The board will hold its next public meeting later this month.

OMB expects agencies will shed millions of square feet of building space in the coming years, now that many federal employees are on a hybrid schedule of in-office and work-from-home days.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, as an extreme case, plans to eliminate up to 60% of its total office space footprint by 2038.

Republican lawmakers and the incoming Trump administration are both looking at ways to increase the occupancy of federal buildings, and to get rid of space that agencies no longer need.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the leaders of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, are calling for federal employees to return to the office five days a week.

While pandemic-era mandatory telework and hybrid work policies led to emptier federal buildings, federal real estate experts say underutilized office space was a problem long before 2020.

The official DOGE account recently tweeted about opportunities to sell underutilized federal buildings.

“Why are American taxpayer dollars being spent to maintain empty buildings?” the official DOGE account posted on Nov. 20.

Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) recently released a new report calling for agencies to rein in telework policies, citing low occupancy rates of federal office buildings.

Biden also signed into law the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies (USE IT) Act, which requires GSA and the Office of Management and Budget to take steps to reduce or consolidate space, if federal building utilization rates fall below 60%.

The legislation also includes the Federal Use It or Lose It Leases (FULL) Act. The bill requires occupancy agreements between GSA and tenant agencies to include an annual report requirement that details monthly occupancy and actual utilization rates.

The FULL Act requires agencies to return leased office space, if actual utilization rates fall below 60% for six months within any one-year period.

Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.), who introduced the FULL Act, said the bill “will help prevent taxpayers from footing the bill for unused federal office space by making sure the federal government only leases the office space it needs and will use.”

“As federal telework levels remain high, agencies’ D.C. HQ offices are sitting mostly empty. This legislation will enable Congress to effectively perform oversight of government spending on office leases by requiring federal agencies to use it or lose it,” Edwards said.

Biden also signed the Public Buildings Accountability Act, which requires the Government Accountability Office to issue a report on the staffing and performance of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, as well as the Federal Building Fund, where GSA stores rent payments from tenant agencies.

Lawmakers have diverted about $1 billion from the fund annually for more than a decade to cover other costs. Since 2011, have skimmed more than $10 billion from the Federal Building Fund to cover other expenditures.

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