Small businesses look for Serviced Office Space, but are the big boys missing out?

Officebroker.com have recently published some more data on the type of business looking office space. They uncovered that 77% of their enquiries for the first sixth months of the year had come from those seeking less than 5 workstations (start-ups amd SME’s).  As the article notes, serviced offices are flexible, affordable and fully equipped, so they are perfect for new and emerging companies. The 4 million small businesses is the UK are therefore the proverbial ‘bread and butter’ for business centres.

The question is what happens to companies requiring more than 5 desks.  Of course there are less larger companies than small businesses and so of course there will be fewer enquiries by this measure.  However, are larger companies being advised to commit to a conventional office lease when a serviced office license maybe more appropriate?  It could be argued that traditional agents could be doing more to advise their clients about serviced office space.  For corporates, many serviced offices offer features that will be particularly useful, such as telepresence suites.  And more generally, larger companies can benefit from having fixed outgoings and be protected from rising costs such as energy bills.

Large companies will however, often want to customise their workspace and also perhaps run their own IT services, and employ their own administative staff which is quite understandable.  But given the huge uncertaintly in the property market, signing a 3/5 year lease could be seen as a risky move.  Are these benefits worth the financial risk? Will rents fall even further?  How many staff will large companies need to retain / recruit in the next 3/5 years? Many, have argued that rents are now “bottoming out” and that now is the ideal time to sign a lease.  However with some economists fearing a “double dip” recession, can you really be sure prices have hit a low?

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Choregus highly recommends our UK offices list, Hammersmith office space, Mayfair office space, Soho office space and Birmingham office space to rent.