JLL’s chief executive has described the flexible workspace market as “one of the big winners of [the] Covid crisis”.
Christian Ulbrich said he expects “all large occupiers” to want flex space as part of their real estate portfolio post-pandemic.
“We were pretty optimistic about that area before because it just is serving a need, which clients like to solve to have that flexibility,” he told analysts on a call to discuss the agency’s first-quarter numbers. “And that need has only become stronger during that Covid and lockdown experience.”
Ulbrich added that “there is room for many variations” but said the agency is “not planning to start our own brand and label around flex space”.
Discussing the broader office market, Ulbrich said he believes many commentators who predicted a wholesale change due to the pandemic will row back on those views.
“Frankly speaking, I think the changes will be much less than people are expecting,” he said. “We have all learned how hard it is to constantly work from home. And so most employees would like to come back into the office. They do like the flexibility of working once in a while from home. But directly they want to get back into the office.
“And so the material impact on space usage, as we said before, will be relatively minor because if you are reducing a bit of space because you need less work desks, you need much more collaboration space and other ways of making an office [an] exciting place where people are able to get the best out of them and all their creativity and experience the brand. This is something where we are pretty optimistic that numbers are coming close to what we saw before the pandemic.”
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