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 2026 Accelerator cohort is offered in collaboration with the National Housing Crisis Task Force.
Three steps, in order.
Every cohort runs the same sequence. It starts with an inventory because most governments genuinely do not have one, and it ends with a decision a council can actually vote on.
Asset Mapping
The jurisdiction inventories the property, structures, and other assets it owns. The total is almost always far higher than the books suggest, because public balance sheets carry land at what it cost rather than what it is worth today.
Asset Selection
From that inventory, the jurisdiction identifies the sites that are underused and could be put to a higher and better use, inside the limits its own policymakers set.
Asset Repurposing
The site is improved, managed, and maintained, and the new value it produces comes back to the public as the benefit the jurisdiction named at the start. Government and outside entities provide oversight throughout.
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 2026 cohort
- Priority deadline
- October 15, 2026
- Selection begins
- Rolling, following the priority deadline
- Final deadline
- November 15, 2026