The Colliers U.S. Flexible Workspace Outlook Report finds that while it seems that the sector is having an impact on the commercial real estate industry, it still only takes up about 1.6% of all office space.
The report surveyed over 27 million square feet of flexible workspace in 19 markets in the U.S. About 40% of space is in Manhattan, while another 12.7 million is laid across 10 leading office markets.
Dallas, Raleigh-Durham, Boston and Seattle were the fastest-growing regions for flexible workspace.
The top 10 coworking firms account for about 80% of all flexible workspaces at 23 million square feet of space. WeWork accounts for over 45% of space with an average of 79,000 square feet per site, while Regus still owns the highest number of sites at 21,000 square feet of space per site.
Coworking operators have started to appeal to large corporations and enterprise clients as well, most likely due to companies trying new locations, reducing expenses, and allowing employees to work out of a creative environment.
Flexible space companies are using three basic environments to suit clients, including executive suites, hotel-curated spaces, and mainstream coworking.
The future of flexible workplaces is still uncertain as its popularity came after the Great Recession of 2007-2009, so identifying how the market will react to economic downturn is up in the air.
