- The Instant Group found that 5% of office deals in the last 12 months involved operators of flex workspace.
- By 2023, 12.5% of commercial real estate wll be in flexible workspace.
- Corporate deals now make up a greater proportion of flexible workspace demand than at any time.
10 February 2020, London – In the biggest sign yet that flexible workspace is changing the dynamics of the conventional office market, 35% of office deals in the last 12 months involved operators of flex workspace. There is now more demand for alternative delivery methods as corporate occupiers switch to more agile models of workspace delivery.
The research, conducted by The Instant Group, shows that by 2023, 12.5% of commercial real estate will be in flexible workspace. Traditional landlords are realising the need to diversify and 83% of flex spaces in the UK are now owned by smaller, niche operators, compared to just 17% which are operated by the bigger brand names.
John Duckworth, Managing Director UK & EMEA at The Instant Group comments: “For the last five years, the size of flex requirements has increased as 25+ and 50+ desk deals have grown faster than the coworking membership element of the market with 45% of the FTSE 100 procuring space via InstantOffices.com over that time.
“These larger corporate deals now make up a greater proportion of flex space demand than at any time previously and have increased significantly since the BREXIT vote and the long period of uncertainty that has prevailed since. Flex space is now a fast, agile route to market for companies of all sizes, and its adoption will only increase as larger organisations work flex options into their processes.
“With large, blue-chip clients predicting that 35 to 40 per cent of their portfolios will consist of flex options in the future, there will be phenomenal enterprise-level demand to drive future growth. The maturation of supply and economic attraction to these models will also further push this market success.
“With more corporates adopting flex space, diversification in the market, decreasing desk rates and greater franchising in the sector, 2020 looks set to be a prosperous year for the flexible market. The impact on the flex market has been pronounced with demand growing to record levels as clients choose alternative solutions.”
As the largest and oldest independent flexible workspace specialist, The Instant Group research and insight is based on more than 20-years of data and its work with clients procuring and managing office space in more than 2,280 cities across 153 countries.
About the Instant Group
Founded in 1999, The Instant Group is a workspace innovation company that rethinks workspace on behalf of its clients injecting flexibility, reducing cost and driving enterprise performance. Instant places more than 11,000 companies a year in flexible workspace such as serviced, coworking or managed offices including Amazon, Barclays, M&G, Booking.com, Shell, Capita, Serco, Teleperformance and Worldpay making it the market leader in flexible workspace.
Its listings’ platform www.instantoffices.com hosts more than 15,000 flexible workspace centres across the world and is the only site of its kind to represent the global market, providing a service to FTSE 100, Fortune 500, and SME clients.
With offices in London, Newcastle, Berlin, Budapest, Haifa, Istanbul, Paris, Dallas, New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Sydney and Melbourne, Instant employs 300 experts and has clients in more than 150 countries. Instant is ranked #28 in the 2019 Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200.
