Was the Obama administration responsible for the decision to move the US embassy in London and the sale of the old location?

Question

President Donald Trump claims that moving the US embassy in the United Kingdom to a different location was a bad decision and a "bad deal". He puts the blame on the Obama administration.

Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!

_{—Donald J. Trump, 5:57 am · 12 Jan 2018}

The above tweet blames the Obama administration for the decision to move the embassy, selling the old one for too low a price, and the budget to build a new one.

I have a few questions about that, all related, so I'll ask them in one go.

1. Did the Obama administration have any say in the decision to move the embassy?
2. Was the Obama administration responsible for the size of the budget for building a new one?
3. Was the Obama administration responsible for the sale of the old one and the price it fetched?

Answer 1

TL;DR

Trump has several key details wrong or incomplete.

1. Did the Obama administration have any say in the decision to move the embassy?

A quick google search on "US Embassy London Moved" gets you the Wikipedia entry:

On October 8, 2008, the embassy announced a conditional agreement with the real estate developer Ballymore to purchase property for a new embassy site on the south bank of the River Thames in the Nine Elms area of the London Borough of Wandsworth. The site lies within the Vauxhall/Nine Elms/Battersea Opportunity Area as set out in the London Plan. The proposed plan would only go forward if approved by the United States Congress and by the local planning authority. The Northern line extension to Battersea will have new stations at Battersea and Nine Elms—combined with major local development. The United States Department of State announced in January 2009 that it was choosing among nine architectural firms, all "modern" and "upmarket", to replace the ageing embassy headquarters. In March 2009 the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations announced that four architectural firms had been selected for the final phase of the design competition. By law, the architect for a U.S. embassy must be an American firm with "numerous security clearances".

The agreement for the embassy's new location was made before Obama even won the election. It's safe to assume that the decision to move had been made long before that, because negotiations of that kind of level take a lot of time.

So that's an immediate and definite "No".

2. Was the Obama administration responsible for the size of the budget for building a new one?

Technically "yes" because ultimately the running administration has responsibility for everything that happens during said administration. The buck, as they say, stops there. That said, according to an article in the Independent, the London US Embassy Building is the most expensive embassy in the world and features numerous innovations against terrorist attacks, threats of which were one of the reasons behind the move:

The current embassy in Grosvenor Square has been the target of terrorist threats in the past and a nuisance to its wealthy neighbours, prompting one aristocrat - a countess named Anca Vidaeff - to stage a hunger strike in protest of it, according to the newspaper.

3. Was the Obama administration responsible for the sale of the old one and the price it fetched?

Yes, obviously. It's what you do when you no longer need an incredibly expensive building.

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EDIT: The statement made Politifact overnight, and they're rating it "Mostly false":

Trump said Obama sold the otherwise fine American embassy in London and relocated at a cost of $1.2 billion.

Actually, the Bush administration put the plan in place after concluding that the existing embassy could not meet security requirements. The cost was about $200 million less than Trump said, $1.02 billion rather than $1.2 billion, and was financed through the sale of the old embassy and two other State Department properties in London.

While he is correct that the sale occurred on Obama’s watch, the wheels were turning and preliminary contracts had been signed earlier.

Trump’s tweet blows past those key details. We rate this claim Mostly False.

Answer 2

(Most of this information comes from Reuters.)

Questions #2 and #3 seem to treat Trump's statement that this was a bad deal as a "fact" (I think SQB's original question asked directly whether this was a bad deal, according to his comment, and I think that should remain part of the original question). While a "bad deal" might be opinion-based, I think we can at least compare the net price of getting a modern, secure facility and judge that this was not a "bad deal."

Key portion of Trump's statement:

The Obama Administration ... sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars.

Parsing this:

sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London

The old embassy was not considered secure enough to handle the increasing amount of threats that it has been getting, and its neighbors felt threatened, as Shadur explained in his answer. Adding to this contentiousness, the Duke of Westminster owns the land the old embassy was located on, and America tends to prefer to own the land its embassies are on.

It is also of "special architectural interest" for its design and detail. Renovating it would have been difficult and any serious alterations would have ruined its appearance and its value. Furthermore, renovations would have been extremely expensive and ineffective. According to Lydia Muniz, director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations at the State Department, renovations would have cost $730 million and the embassy still would not have had state-of-the-art security.

sold.. for "peanuts"

Local British media reported that the old embassy was sold for 500 million pounds (the amount was not officially disclosed). On December 31st, 2009 this was equivalent to 806,700,000 U.S. dollars. The new embassy was funded entirely by sales of property in London, and this figure would account for most of the price of the new embassy, which has a variety of state of the art security features.

only to build a new one in an off location

We have already established that the embassy needed to be changed to a location that did not threaten its neighbors, and SQB (the OP) says himself that this location is one in which other embassies are moving. In addition to this, as David Richerby notes in a comment below, "this 'off' location is only two miles away from the original one ... on the south bank of the Thames."

for 1.2 billion dollars

The price of the embassy was actually 1 billion dollars.

In short, renovations on the old facility would have cost $730 million dollars vs the 1 billion dollars for the new facility. The old facility is thought to have been sold for 500 million pounds (and we didn't own the land so that is just for the facility itself), roughly equivalent back then to 809 million dollars, and we would not have been able to sell it for anything, since we would still be using it.

So for 191 million dollars (net) we got a state-of-the-art facility in a less contentious area (the point of an embassy being diplomacy, this is important) that other embassies are moving to, on land that we actually own, instead of spending 730 million dollars for a facility that was still not as secure as possible and added threat to its neighbors due to its location.