Germany’s ImmobilienScout24 has announced it has joined forces with search portal deskwanted – a project from the YOU IS NOW incubator of ImmobilienScout24 – and now offers flexible workstations in shared offices for rent.
Creative professions, freelancers or people on the move who need a ‘temporary desk’ and want to network, will find numerous offers in their vicinity, throughout Germany and internationally.
The merger of the largest German real estate marketplace with the internationally oriented search portal for co-working spaces offers advantages for all parties.
Suppliers of shared office space will benefit from the well-established brand ImmobilienScout24 and access to over 7.5 million users per month.
In addition to 150,000 offers for commercial and industrial space, a large selection of flexible, single workstations is now available at the leading real estate marketplace – and not only in Germany.
deskwanted is a brainchild of Carsten Foertsch from Germany and Joel Dullroy from Australia. The duo started up their company in 2010 and since September 2011 have been developing the business in the YOU IS NOW lab at ImmobilienScout24.
According to Statistics of the Bundesverband der Freien Berufe (BFB – Federal Association of Freelance Professions) at the beginning of 2012, there were 1.2 million freelancers in Germany, and the numbers have been growing.
This is accompanied by increased demand for co-working spaces, i.e. temporary, flexible workstations with the necessary technical infrastructure and conference rooms in shared office space.
The number of co-working spaces in the world has doubled since 2006. Today there are around 2,000 of these new networked modes of work worldwide. Over 50 per cent are already listed at deskwanted.
Marc Stilke, CEO of ImmobilienScout24, can see even more potential in this merger: “With a more individual focus in the working world, the demand for flexible work space models will grow. We identified this trend and together with deskwanted we have developed a customised offer in our YOU IS NOW incubator.”
The two founders, Foertsch and Dullroy, have developed their business concept further with the support of the market leader for real estate search portals. “With mentoring provided by ImmobilienScout24 we have been able to compile a professional business plan” Joel Dullroy explains. “And the advice from different experts, whether on search engine optimisation, pricing or online marketing campaigns, was a great help in taking this further.” The number of users of deskwanted has already doubled since May 2012.
ImmobilienScout24 also offers fully equipped offices for short periods as well as virtual offices with business address, postal and telephone service, in addition to co-working spaces, to satisfy people’s individual, flexible needs.
