The latest research by Cushman & Wakefield carried out on office space in Central London has revealed some interesting results. The research shows that co-working and serviced offices throughout Central London have the biggest share of leased space, which has never happened before.
The research showed that co-working and serviced office providers such as The Office Group, WeWork and London Executive Offices occupied nearly 885,000 sq. ft. of freshly-rented office space throughout Central London in the first part of 2017. It also showed that the second quarter of 2017, serviced office providers accounted for 651,540 sq. ft. of newly leased space. This is far higher than the industries we usually see occupy space in London – financial services, media and technology for example.
What The Companies Have To Say About This
Unsurprisingly coworking and serviced office providers are thrilled that the uptake in their product is increasing. Nick Riesel (FreeOfficeFinder, Managing Director) talked about seeing an increase over recent months in enquiries for coworking space throughout the commercial property industry. He has seen providers such as The Office Group, LEO and WeWork expand the space they take up throughout Central London. He said that the statistics detailed in the research by Cushman & Wakefield show that demand throughout Central London for more flexible office solutions is certainly on the increase.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Elaine Rossal (Head of Central London Research) said that flexible office space wasn’t the sole reason for the increase, however did say that two of the biggest transactions towards the 2nd half of 2017 have been with WeWork taking up space as a tenant.
What Statistics Show
This growing trend in using coworking and serviced office spaces means that they have taken up more space in the first half of the year than they did for all of 2016. It is likely that co-working providers and serviced office space will overtake the record of 1,267,926 sq. ft. which was set back in 2014. This fast increase in uptake for serviced and coworking spaces means that for the first half of 2017, 4.8m sq. ft. of space was let in Central London, overtaking the same period in 2016 by 10%.
With statistics showing office space of this kind being so popular throughout 2017, this trend will likely continue, and it is expected that flexible office space will continue to take up more space throughout Central London and the surrounding areas. People are becoming much more open to flexible ways of working, and coworking spaces and serviced offices will certainly help cater to this popular new way of working.
