Part of the attraction of a coworking space is reasonable cost. Independent workers generally can’t afford to rent conventional office space, so a local coworking space or spaces offer cost-effective alternatives.
Part of this savings comes from “on-demand” rental, with only-what-you-need pricing. If you need a desk for one day a week, or for one week a month, you don’t need to pay for unused capacity. Similarly, other facilities, such as meeting rooms, are available just as needed.
Of course, in the best case, when the worker is part of a community of peers she is getting a lot more than a desk and utilities.
But just what does basic coworking cost?
This spring, Circleloop reports a compilation of coworking in major cities [1]. These figures reflect local conditions, of course, supply and demand and the availability of competing alternatives. But they are surprisingly similar across the survey.
It is interesting to see that the most expensive cost per month, Lichtenstein at £464. is not that different from many other cities. And even the least expensive in the survey, Buenos Aires £37, is not that different. Mainly, I suspect, these figures track the overall cost of office space in these locations, as well as the general state of the local economy.
Naturally, these figures are a bit hard to interpret precisely. Are these “hot desks” truly equivalent in all these facilities? Probably not, at least in the sense that the cities have overall different infrastructure and environment. For that matter, these are averages with no indication of the variation among different coworking spaces.
In any case, I predict that prices will be quite a bit lower in the next few years. Vast amounts of commercial office space is empty and looking for users. There will be opportunities to open or expand coworking and offer very much cheaper rents. This will mean new coworking spaces, and, I expect, many smaller, boutique-y spaces.
I hope many will be attached to child care facilities, which will benefit working parents, and possibly provide income for child care facilities.
There will also be a lot of coworking spaces outside city centers, and even—gasp—out here in the corn fields. We have learned that we can work remotely, but remote workers still need colleagues.
In short, these statistics are both out of date and probably not representative of several important trends in the near future.
- CircleLoop, The Co-Working Index: Where in the world is the best city to co-work post-Covid?, in Circleloop Blog, May 7, 2021. https://blog.circleloop.com/the-co-working-index
What is Coworking? What will Coworking Become?
What Is Coworking? 