Coworking London Conference: Coworking and its Impact on London’s Real Estate Market

We looked at Coworking and its Impact on London’s Real Estate market in session 1 of the Coworking London Conference 2019.

First up was Mark Bott from Colliers, who spoke not about coworking but of FLEX and everything that was not traditional.  He advised that flex space is only 5% of London office space market which has increased by 50% in the last 5 years and set to continue to increase with demand.  

His takeaway point was that large corporates want to use their office facilities to retain and attract talent which will drive Flex demand.  The operators that continue to innovate will prevail in the tight and competitive coworking market. 

Oliver Knight from Landsec, spoke about how Myo was set up to fill this need.  They now offer 4 solutions that for them all fall into Flex but still range from terms of 1-10 years.

David Garson of Office Freedom went on to predict 35% of flex needs will come from large corporates by end of 2019!  This is currently serviced by 300 flex space operators with a new opne opening every 5 days.

His takeaway point was “the employee power shift” means that agile workforce will continue to grow, with employees and employers both seeing the benefit of flexible working.

It was the needs of the flexible worker that was at the core of the work and research by Workthere by Savills.  Their Head Cal Lee emphasised that the biggest satisfaction gap came from operators not getting the essentials right.  Top ranking disappointments were air and noise pollution and comfortable work area and cleanliness as the most important factors.

Jonathan Weinbrenn summaries in his moderating the panel discussions, “Don’t get caught in a trap – we’re not taking over yet. 5% of the office market in London is flexible, but that means 95% of it isn’t. Conventional office space is not dead.”

Photo credits: eOffice, Coworking London