Sold American: An inventory of USPS disposed properties, 2009-2014

The Postal Service has sold over 500 properties over the past five years, but it hasn’t released much information about the disposals. A few weeks ago, however, the Postal Service finally updated its Owned Facilities report, so it’s now possible to learn more about which properties have been sold off.

The overall scope of the disposal program has not been a mystery.  The Postal Service’s annual 10-K reports provide some basic information about the number of facilities it owns and its proceeds from property disposals.

According to the 2013 10-K, the Postal Service owned 8,598 facilities; in 2009, it owned 8,419.  That represents a net decrease of 202 facilities.  This doesn’t include other types of property, like parking lots and land, that have also been sold.

The 10-K reports also provide numbers for the proceeds from the sale of property and equipment (but not separated to show just property). The proceeds totaled $158 million in 2013, $148 million in 2012, $137 million in 2011, $70 million in 2010, and $33 million in 2009.  That adds up to about $546 million in revenue.

That’s about all one can find about the disposals in the 10-K reports.  In order to learn more, we’ve compared two versions of the USPS Owned Facilities lists, one compiled back in 2009 (or thereabouts), and one published just a few weeks ago. These are state-by-state lists of all the properties owned by the Postal Service, which are provided to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.    (There’s also a set of reports for Leased Facilities.)

The current lists of Owned Facilities came out in September 2014.  They were probably updated sometime in August 2014, as indicated by the fact that they don’t reflect some recent sales, including the Bronx GPO and the Union Square post office in Somerville, Mass.

These new facilities lists can be found on the USPS website here.  For easier viewing, we’ve put them on Google Docs here.  A list that merges all the individual state lists into one big list is here; a map is here.

Read More: Sold American: An inventory of USPS disposed properties, 2009-2014 | Save the Post Office.

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