This article is based on the latest episode of the Everything Coworking podcast. For the rest of what Scott and Will covered in the keynote, listen to the full episode.
Scott Homa is known in this industry for one number: 30% of office inventory would be flexible by 2030. We have picked on him about it for years and called it clickbait.
At the keynote that opened this year’s Global Workspace Association conference in Denver, he explained where the 30% came from: it was a demand number, not a forecast of how much flex space would be built. JLL asked occupiers how they wanted their portfolios split between long-term leases and flex, and they said they wanted 30% flex.
Scott heads America Property Sectors Research (which includes flexible office space), and he joined the GWA board when I was executive director, so I got to know him during that run. He co-hosted the session with Will Sanford, the Director of Coworking at Yardi. Both firms track the coworking and flex market using different datasets and methodologies, and Will said that when the two teams put their numbers side by side, they landed almost exactly in the same place.
These are the four insights from that session I want to pass on to operators who were not in the room: how far the U.S. sits from a mature flex market, which size of operator is growing right now, where flex ranks when an enterprise tenant picks a building, and what a fast-growing enterprise tenant is buying when it signs with you.
1. Flexible space is 2.3% of the U.S. office market, and London is at 10%
Yardi puts flex at about 2.3% of the U.S. office inventory it tracks, roughly 166 million square feet across an estimated 9,400 locations and 4,300 operators. That 2.3% doesn’t include spec suites or the other flexible office products landlords run themselves.
The industry treats London as the benchmark for a mature flex market, because London has been doing flex longer than the U.S. has, and flex there is about 10% of total office inventory. Manhattan has double London’s total office square footage and significantly less flex, so if Manhattan matched London’s 10%, the panel estimated it could support up to eight times its current coworking inventory.
Both speakers were careful to say that the comparison does not scale to every market in the country, and that Manhattan and London are not directly comparable in size or structure, though they are similar enough to treat as analogous. We probably will not reach Scott’s “30% by 2030,” but double digits across major markets by then are still possible, and going from 2.3% to 10% would be a big move, though it would take more than coworking alone to get there.
2. The fastest growth is in operators with two to six locations
The top 100 operators by size added 8% more locations over the last three years. Operators running two to six locations added 88% more locations over those same three years, by far the largest growth of any segment tracked in the session.
3. Spillover space and offsites are why enterprise tenants want flex in a building
Scott put up results from JLL’s 2026 Occupier Pulse Survey on what enterprise tenants look for in a building. Respondents could select more than one option, so the numbers do not add up to 100%. The top three were transportation and parking (46%), food and beverage (46%), and security (44%). Scott called those three the critical needs: without them, a building does not make a tenant’s tour list.
Flex is fourth, at 27%.
| What enterprise tenants look for in a building | Share of tenants who named it |
| Transportation and parking | 46% |
| Food and beverage | 46% |
| Security | 44% |
| Flex / coworking space | 27% |
| Conferencing facility | 21% |
| Neighborhood amenities | 20% |
| Concierge services | 13% |
| End-of-trip facilities | 12% |
| Gym / fitness | 8% |
| Rooftop / outdoor space | 5% |
The slide’s title was that flex is the first differentiator, not the first requirement. Tenants do not require flex space in the building, but they want to see it there because it gives them spillover space, room for employees to work during a build-out, well-designed meeting rooms, and somewhere to hold an offsite, all outside the square footage they lease.
That ranking changes the conversation with building owners who are not sold on flex. Whether you are pitching a lease or going after a management agreement, you can now show that enterprise tenants rank flex right behind transportation and parking, food and beverage, and security.
The ranking matters most when the owners still have other space in the building to lease, and less when you are taking the whole building. I have a client right now whose space sits inside a 100,000-square-foot building, and the owners sell that space to the other tenants as an amenity. It is a well-designed space with amenities the other tenants find compelling, and the owners know it closes leases elsewhere in the building. They can do the math on the value that the coworking space adds to the building’s net operating income, and that number creates a clear ROI for investing in a flexible office offering in the building.
I am seeing building owners come to flex for strategic reasons more than ever. I have run operator searches for family offices recently, and they want flex to engage the community, serve their other tenants, or complete a campus. Others want it for the same reason the owners of that 100,000-square-foot building do, because it helps them lease the rest of the building.
4. Enterprise tenants are buying a relationship with an operator, not a specific space
Will described a conversation with the head of real estate at a major frontier AI lab whose footprint has grown from 250,000 square feet to almost 2 million square feet in two years. They never go into a location intending to stay more than 24 months, and if they commit for longer than 12 months, they install and control their own access and security systems. As Will relayed it, her framing was that they are looking for operating partners who can scale with them and meet their requirements.
Those demands make sense for a company entering new markets that fast. Tenants like that are not buying your square footage, your design, or the quality of your finishes and furniture. They are buying confidence that you know how to partner with them and get them what they need, which takes operational efficiency and a leadership team that can engage with them, account manage them, and keep up with their level of need. That is not a fit for every operator, but if you do want fast-growing enterprise tenants, those are the requirements.
This article is the written companion to this episode of the Everything Coworking podcast. For the rest of what Scott and Will covered in the keynote, listen to the full episode.
