WASHINGTON, DC-Hours after the White House released a list of the excess federal properties that it was proposing to sell, it moved to establish the procedures under which it would like to do so. The Office of Management and Budget held a conference call, staffed by US Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients and US Controller Daniel Werfel, who told of proposed legislation US President Barack Obama is sending Congress on Wednesday outlining the process.

Based on Zients and Werfel’s description it will include a commission similar to the one that decided which forts would remain open and which would close--aka the 2005 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. This idea, which has been suggested in public forums before, would streamline the process for both public and private sectors.

Some listeners to the call were a bit surprised at the speed of events. "I don’t think we were expecting it to move this quickly today," Christopher Roth, managing director with Jones Lang LaSalle, tells GlobeSt.com. The proposed legislation, it is hoped, will morph into a finished product that clarifies who has the authority to dispose of the properties and mitigate all the expected hurdles, he says.

Meanwhile, Roth and a legion of other real estate professionals are scouring and assessing and, most importantly, culling the list of properties released. Numbering more than 14,000 there is probably a lot of junk, or at least assets in which few buyers would be interested, he says. "You have to screen a lot out to identify the top 10 or 15 properties on that list," Roth says.

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