Shared Economy, En Bloc Fever Fire Up Singapore's Property Sector In 2018

Dubbed as the ‘catalytic saviour’ of the property market in 2018, there are about 110-120 flexible workspace operating across Singapore, occupying 944,000 square feet of net lettable area.

- JM Tan

The sharing economy has well and truly come of age as a mainstream working option in Singapore and is one of the few bright spots in the commercial market. Co-working spaces now account for for 4.5% of Grade-A office space in Singapore, which is around 54 soccer pitches in size. But its is the dizzying growth in coworking spaces that has analysts excited, with the sector tripling since 2015.

Colliers International senior analyst JM Tan noted that 2017 was a whirlwind year for the flexible workspace sector, which grew 44% YOY in terms of total real estate footprint across Singapore, marking the fastest annual growth in the sector’s history. Once just the confines of small startups looking for a cheap way to look legit and reduce office space, coworking has now been adopted by the largest of corporations.

Perhaps the most significant indicator of Singapore’s coworking coming of age was the entry of American giant We-Work, which acquired local operator Space mob in 2017 and proceeded to quickly shut down the office for a major renovation before reopening with major tenants including HP and e-commerce platform Shopee which took up the entire Ascent Tower.

Apart from the obvious technology startup sector its the financial services big guns who are moving fastest into co-working, with both HSBC and Standard Chartered. HSBC and Standard Chartered are both taken up large desk counts in flexible workspaces across Asia Pacific, noted Tan. “The insurance industry, where a large proportion of employees may be in the sales agency function an inherently mobile occupation well suited for using flexible workspaces as drop-down spaces across the city.”