CBRE South Asia, real estate consulting firm, in its latest report ‘Flexible Space Tenant Survey - 2018’says the overall stock of flexible space market in India increased by about 50%, from almost 10 million sq. ft. in 2017 to about 15 million sq. ft. by Q3 2018, making it among the biggest markets in the APAC region. Furthermore, Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR were the largest markets in India, with a combined share of almost 55%.
The report also highlights that flexible spaces account to approximately 1.7% of total stock in Asia-Pacific; Shanghai and Delhi-NCR are the only two cities where flexible space share is more than 3% of the overall office stock.
Leasing by flexible space operators quadrupled from 2016 levels to about 3.5 million sq. ft. in 2017. More than 80% of the leasing was witnessed in the top three cities of Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai. Moreover, the share of flexible spaces as a part of total office absorption has also doubled from 5% in H1 2017 to about 10% in H1 2018.
Good demand
FCommenting on the findings of the report, Anshuman Magazine, Chairman, India and South-East Asia, CBRE, said: “Originating as a shared service for start-ups, flexible spaces are now being utilised by established corporates as well to make their portfolios more agile amid a dynamic business environment. Given that the Indian flexible space market is one of the biggest across APAC, we anticipate that this segment will remain high on the investor radar as well. We expect that the leasing quantum of this segment would rise from about 5.4 million sq. ft. in 2018 to about 7-9 million sq. ft. by 2020.”
In August 2018, CBRE India’s Research and A & T Occupier Group conducted interviews with flexible space tenants across the country to get their views on the overall experience of operating from flexible spaces. The survey covered both global and domestic tenants such as co-working, business centres and hybrid spaces.
The respondents belonged to a wide spectrum of industries ranging from technology, banking, financial services, engineering, manufacturing to media and e-commerce.
