Why London’s business landlords should get inventive to halt plummeting revenues

Business property has reached a precipice. The decline in workplace worth forecast on the finish of 2022 is being realised and important losses suffered in consequence – with the likes of British Land reporting a pre-tax lack of £1bn this week.

Rising inflation and widespread price range crunching are main main firms, together with Meta and John Lewis, to depart their workplaces behind. However others aren’t so prepared to show their again, with JPMorgan Chase and Amazon amongst these publicly advocating for a mass return.

Workplace leasing demand has not bounced again to pre-pandemic ranges, as many optimistically advised it might. However landlords can not bury their heads within the sand. To outlive, they should embody the identical flexibility as the businesses they’re promoting to, whereas recognising they’re not simply competing in opposition to one another, however different office options, lots of them digital in nature.

Whereas the backlash to options from the likes of Jeremy Hunt for a reset to workplace “default” proves there may be little want for such a full-time return, lower than a 3rd of staff wish to go absolutely distant and 72% of leaders see the workplace as an important hub.

There’s nonetheless a thriving demand for workplace area. But empty workplace area has risen by 65% prior to now three years.

The spoke within the wheels for business landlords isn’t lack of demand, nor provide. It’s that this demand has modified form. And the present providing itself is not match for function.

Whereas the wants and practices of the UK’s workforce have advanced past recognition because the pandemic, workplace leasing is caught prior to now.

From long-term leaseholds, to full-time contracts and rigid areas designed to serve a single, inflexible function, most out there workplace area isn’t tailor-made to our post-pandemic working wants. Corporations are adopting an unlimited spectrum of practices, with “fixed-”, “remote-” and “flexible-” hybrid working overlaying an virtually limitless listing of variations. Some use the workplace for sooner or later every week, others for 4, others let workers come and go as they please. There is no such thing as a longer one-size-fits-all. A singular, mounted five-day workplace lease merely can’t match this new versatile, diversified want.

The very definition of the aim of an workplace has irrevocably modified. Companies not require an workplace from which to function. In an effort to be justified, an workplace should ship a rise in productiveness increased in worth than its personal value. These productiveness beneficial properties might be delivered by elevated workers attraction and retention, higher collaboration, and an improved sense of belonging and function. Companies in the present day need all of these advantages from an workplace area to facilitate elevated productiveness, whereas additionally trying to scale back the price.

They’re voting with their ft. With many searching for renewed cost-cutting measures amid the rising value of residing, cash wasted on empty workplace days – which prices enterprise as much as £190,000 a 12 months – or on workplace area that doesn’t serve their wants, has been a justified spend to cull. Many are giving up their workplace leases and searching elsewhere for an area that extra precisely displays their wants – and which they solely must pay for on the times they wish to use it.

And they’re discovering them. A choose few landlords have begun to strike out forward of the curve and flex the best way their workplace area is each set-up and made out there. Whether or not that’s by providing part-time contracts or facilitating hybrid workplace sharing to allow a number of firms to profit from the identical area on completely different days, this fluid method is unlocking a extra versatile, dependable stream of income.

These embracing this innovation are additionally offering extra intuitively designed areas, that are in a position to adapt to cater to a wider, extra various vary of office actions. The workplace is not merely about desks and boardrooms – it needs to be an area price leaving residence for.

As this shift in workplace leasing continues to develop, people who refuse to flex and adapt will finally be left behind. At Space32, we’re seeing a major rise in demand for extra versatile workplace leasing, with two-thirds of companies in search of alternate options to a full-time contract.

To fill empty workplace area and get well falling income, it’s not attainable to depend on securing contracts with full-time occupiers, who can pay five-day hire and adapt their working schedules to go well with the area offered. As an alternative, landlords should realign their property to mirror the realities of the hybrid working period.

This implies rethinking the best way areas are offered and the varieties of contracts that are supplied, with room for variation in the best way they can be utilized and rented. We should allow firms to hire workplace area on their very own phrases, offering contracts which allow the varied vary of practices being pursued, reminiscent of empowering tenants to sublet their very own areas to different companies.

Business property leasing might be at a crossroads, however landlords have a possibility to re-shape its future for the higher. The one path to dependable income is in assembly the advanced wants of the businesses searching for out workplace area. And to do that, the one choice is to adapt.