Putting Assets to Work.
Putting Assets to Work is the program that starts the whole conversation. A jurisdiction joins a national cohort, finds out what it actually owns and what it is actually worth, and leaves with a ranked shortlist of sites that can produce housing and recurring revenue — without selling the land and without raising taxes.
Propvizer created and runs the program. The 2027 cohort will be run with support from the National Housing Crisis Task Force, whose work on public asset corporations informs the training and best-practice framework behind the curriculum.
Follow one site through the three steps.
The town below is illustrated. It follows one city property from the first inventory to a signed ground lease, playing each step in order. Select a step to watch it again.
The city starts with its goals.
It wants to reach them without raising taxes.
- Affordable housing
- Grocery access
- Climate resilience
- Revenue
First, the city lists everything it owns.
It finds a library, a fire station, offices, and a salt yard, together worth more than the books suggest.
Then it finds the property that could do more.
The library, fire station, and offices are in use. The salt yard can move to a better-suited site outside town, which frees its block.
Developers propose what the site could become.
Homes, a grocery store, solar canopies, or a mix could each serve one of the city's goals. Propvizer helps the city weigh developers' proposals against those goals.
The city keeps the land and collects rent.
The developer builds under a ground lease that pays the city rent for decades.
Start from the problem, not the parcel.
The program works backwards from something a jurisdiction is already trying to fund. The land is the means, not the point.
Housing
Publicly owned land is the cheapest land a housing deal will ever find, and it is already assembled, already served by infrastructure, and already public.
Recurring revenue
A ground lease pays the jurisdiction for decades and does not require selling the asset or asking voters for a tax increase.
Capacity
Most governments have no full inventory, no valuation, and no one whose job is to think about the portfolio as a portfolio. The cohort builds all three.
In their words.
“Doing this work, joining this cohort, has helped to guide us and change the culture of how we think about what’s possible out of the county.”
Ashley Ramchandani, Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Cook County
“We realized our property portfolio is pretty vast and we’re not using it to its maximum potential. Joining the PA2W incubator is an opportunity for us to think differently and think smarter about our real estate portfolio to serve our needs and address financial challenges.”
Kimberly Olivares, then Deputy Chief Financial Officer, City of Austin
Where the program came from.
Putting Assets to Work was launched with the Government Finance Officers Association and Urban3, and grew out of an inventory Ben McAdams ran as Mayor of Salt Lake County that valued the county's real estate at far more than anyone expected.
Propvizer now administers the program, and carries the work past the cohort into the deals themselves through our Property Advisory practice. Jurisdictions can do one or both.
Key dates for the 2027 cohort
- Priority deadline
- November 1, 2026
- Selection begins
- Rolling, following the priority deadline
- Applications considered through
- December 1, 2026
- Anticipated program start
- February 1, 2027