Yes, I think the great majority of small-town locations are leased buildings. At least since the 1980s, USPS (like Walgreens and other retailers) has preferred to lease their small-town locations. USPS has various criteria they’ve tried to use in recent decades, and standardized build-to-suit plans, which is why so many small town POs look alike. But in places where new development is tricky, like the California coast, they’ll take other leased spaces.
Given we are well into anecdote territory now - I thought this story from my father rather covers the small town gossip of the postmaster.
WW2 Britain. Retired chap moves to a cottage in the village. He goes to London and sends himself a few letters on OHMS envelopes addressed to Major XXX. Sometime later it seems everyone in the village is addressing him as Major. “morning Major,” “nice day isn’t it Major” etc.
A bit later, the Home Guard is established in the UK. My grandfather, who was both a captain in the army during WW1 and the local vicar, becomes the head of the village Home Guard unit. He of course gets access to everyone’s military records. No, Major XXX had no such rank.
This was, it seems, a common trick - engineered gossip for the village postmaster to spread.
If we’re offering UK experience, “sub-post offices” have for decades been franchised to small nieghbourhood shop owners, who will have a separate counter offering basic Post Office services - and they will quite often still “live over the shop”.
Not sure why USPS would be expected to operate all that differently from many other federal entities. In cities big or small, gov’t offices operate all kinds of rental space. I’ve worked for the feds for 32 years, and don’t think I’ve ever been stationed inside a gov’t owned facility. Right now, we hold administrative hearings on 3/4 of the second floor of rented space in a nondescript 3-story suburban office building.
Flats above shops and offices are common here.
In the town where I grew up (78 people) our now-defunct post office was a little tiny shack in my neighbor’s yard.
I wonder if such an apartment would get any sort of umbrella protection from the federal laws that protect post offices?