Singapore Office Landlords Proactive In Offering Coworking Space
SINGAPORE – CBRE revealed that employers are seeking to provide different types of workspaces to their staff. Some are looking for a combination of traditional office space and coworking space in the same building, while others are seeking flexible office spaces across several locations, so that their staff have the flexibility to work at these spaces in addition to the main office, reported The Edge on Friday morning (3 June, SGT).
As such, office landlords are responding to such needs, said Sidharth Dhawan, CBRE’s Regional Head of agile real estate for Asia Pacific.
“Office landlords in mature markets like Australia and Singapore are realising that they need to offer a spectrum of different solutions, and different kinds of spaces for tenants,” he noted.
In Singapore, some owners of office buildings have decided to operate and manage their own coworking space. For instance, Keppel Land rolled out Kloud, its coworking and serviced office arm, five years ago.
As for CapitaLand, it purchased a half-stake in coworking space operator The Work Project for S$27 million three years ago. To date, the latest and largest space in The Work Project’s portfolio is the 69,100 sq ft outlet at CapitaSpring, a new 51-storey, Grade A office tower.
Meanwhile, GuocoLand’s new 30-storey office tower at Guoco Midtown offers corporate lessees a combination of private core spaces, shared “swing spaces” and public external workspaces. “Swing spaces” refer to temporary spaces within the same project that are available to tenants on short-term leases. The goal of such space is to cater for “the evolving space needs of corporate tenants, and the growing acceptance of hybrid workspaces”, explained Valerie Wong, GuocoLand’s Group General Manager for asset management.
This shows that office Landlords in Singapore are “very proactive as they realise that they need to provide such solutions for tenants,” said CBRE’s Dhawan. He expects more landlords focusing on hospitality and tech, as well as on offering various types of works spaces to meet the needs of tenants.
Furthermore, he shared that office tenants want options in leases too. Instead of standard 3+3-year leases, landlords could offer tenants shorter leases of one or two years, as Dhawan expects that the need for flexibility among occupiers will remain post-pandemic.
