How Government Landlords Set Rent Wrong

The Fiscal Policy Podcast with Fexingo: Government Budgets, Stimulus, and Public Spending · Jul 1, 2026 · 12m · transcript

Episode 84 of The Fiscal Policy Podcast digs into a little-known but massive distortion in public budgets: how governments set the rent on their own properties—office buildings, courthouses, even land—using internal transfer payments that often bear no relation to market rates. Lucas and Luna examine the case of the UK's 'Nominal Rent' system, where agencies like HM Courts & Tribunals pay £1 per year for prime London real estate, and contrast it with the US General Services Administration's 'market-based' rental model, which has its own perverse incentives. They…