Madrid and Barcelona alone grow 71% in coworking space

March 20, 2019
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This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

The contracting in both cities exceeds 55,000 square meters of property after entering into the market of various important real estate players.

Coworking continues to garner popularity in Spain. In Madrid and Barcelona alone, 55,900 square meters of corworking spaces were contracted between January and September, which represented an increase of 71% over the same period last year.

According to a study by the consulting firm Cushman & Wakefield, in the first nine months of the 2018, 26,800 square meters of coworking offices were hired in Madrid and 29,100 square meters in Barcelona.

This growth derives from the commitment to the coworking of large corporations. As the report explains, "in the early 2000s, small spaces occupied by freelancers and freelancers predominated; Today, these spaces continue to exist, but the potential of the coworking phenomenon has caused companies such as Banco Santander (Openbank), Accenture and Everis, among others, to also use flexible spaces to allocate part of their activity."

The flexible and shared office boom intensified in 2014, the first year of economic recovery in Spain. In addition to the large business groups, which rely on this model of space to optimize their real estate resources and employee productivity, international coworking giants have landed in Spain in recent years to generate supply that meets the growing demand.

WeWork and Spaces (owned by Regus), global specialists in this segment already have expansion plans in the national market. The same applies to the main socimis, such as Merlin and Colonial, which, in addition to promoting brands that manage coworking spaces, these companies are adapting several of their properties to become flexible offices.

Madrid and Barcelona are the focus of this market. WeWork already has 35,000 square meters of offices hired between both capitals. A fifth, 7,000 square meters, manages the technological hub of Barcelona, ​​one of the epicenters of coworking in Spain. In this same district plans to continue growing Spaces, which already has 6,000 square meters spread over several buildings.

Among the large Spanish real estate companies, Merlin and Colonial are, to date, the strongest betting on this new trend. Both have entered the sector with the purchase or alliance of companies specialized in this market. Colonial acquired the Utopicus brand at the end of 2017, as EjePrime announced, and already has the commitment to open ten new coworking centers from 2019 that will add a total of 15,000 square meters between Madrid and Barcelona.

Merlin, for its part, has launched the Twisttt brand through Loom House, a Spanish shared office manager controlled by the socimi by more than 30%. Other national players such as Inmobiliaria del Sur have also made investments in this sector. The Andalusian real estate company launched in September last year iSspaces, a 1,800 square meter coworking center in Seville.

"The entry of these new actors is another sign that the large owners are not alien to the new trends and that the composition of the work space offer is changing structurally," says the report by Cushman & Wakefield.

Who will be the next actors to enter the scene is a mystery, but that coworking has a long journey ahead in the office market in Spain and the world is a reality.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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