The value of property owned by the UK’s biggest shared office providers soared by more than a third last year.
In a sign of the growing flexible workspace market, the value of the industry’s top ten share office providers’ property jumped 35 per cent to £13.6bn last year.
The new data, released by real estate law firm Boodle Hatfield, also underlined the growth in demand for shorter leases among major companies, with the 2017 average length for a new commercial property lease standing at 7.1 years on average, compared to an average of 25 years in 1987.
Rising appetite for such short leases and shared office spaces has driven an increase in traditional property heavyweights experimenting in the sector, with giants such as British Land, Great Portland Estates and Landsec all looking to tap into the fast-growing market.
“Shared workspaces have now gone beyond being a cool place for media and tech startups – they are now a substantial part of the commercial property market in major cities worldwide,” according to Simon Williams, partner at Boodle Hatfield.
Williams added: “The success of WeWork has tempted some of the bigger traditional players in commercial property into the shared workspace market. The expectation is that there is still significant growth in this market in the coming years.”
Source: City AM