Flex has a reputation problem. To sceptics, “30% of office inventory will be flexible by 2030” always sounded like a headline built to get clicks rather than a serious forecast. But when JLL’s Scott Homa unpacked that number at the keynote opening this year’s Global Workspace Association (GWA) conference in Denver, the story turned out to be more interesting than the soundbite. The 30% figure was never a prediction of how much flex space would get built. It was a demand number. When JLL asked occupiers how they wanted their portfolios split between long-term leases and flexible space, they said they wanted roughly a third of it flexible.
That distinction matters, because it reframes the entire conversation about where flex is headed. Homa, who leads JLL’s America Property Sectors Research, shared the stage with Will Sanford, Director of Coworking at Yardi. The two firms track the market through different datasets and methodologies, yet when they compared numbers, they landed in almost the same place. For operators, landlords, and enterprise tenants trying to read the flex market correctly, that alignment is worth paying attention to.
Flex is still just 2.3% of US office stock
According to Yardi’s tracking, flexible office space accounts for about 2.3% of the US office inventory it monitors, roughly 166 million square feet spread across an estimated 9,400 locations and 4,300 operators. That figure doesn’t even include landlord-run spec suites or other flexible products operated directly by building owners.
London is the industry’s usual benchmark for a mature flex market, sitting at around 10% of total office inventory, having had a head start on the US. Manhattan, by comparison, has roughly double London’s total office square footage but a far smaller flex share. If Manhattan matched London’s 10% penetration, the panel estimated it could support as much as eight times its current coworking inventory. Both speakers were careful to note the comparison doesn’t scale cleanly to every US market. Still, the gap between 2.3% and even a modest march toward double digits represents a substantial runway. Homa’s “30% by 2030” may remain out of reach, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.
The fastest growth is happening among small operators
One of the more surprising findings from the session concerns who is actually expanding right now. The largest 100 operators by footprint added 8% more locations over the past three years, solid growth but hardly spectacular. Operators running just two to six locations, by contrast, added 88% more locations over the same period, by far the fastest-growing segment tracked. That’s a meaningful signal for the industry: the next wave of flex growth may not come primarily from the household names, but from smaller, more nimble operators scaling from a single successful site into a regional footprint.
Flex ranks fourth on tenants’ building wish list, but that’s still a strong position
JLL’s 2026 Occupier Pulse Survey asked enterprise tenants what they look for when evaluating a building. Respondents could select multiple answers, and the top three were transportation and parking (46%), food and beverage (46%), and security (44%), the baseline requirements without which a building doesn’t even make a tenant’s shortlist. Flexible workspace came in fourth, named by 27% of respondents, ahead of conferencing facilities, neighbourhood amenities, concierge services, and gym access.
The framing that stuck with the audience was that flex is a differentiator, not yet a requirement. Tenants aren’t demanding coworking space in the building, but they want to see it there, because it gives them spillover capacity, room to house staff during a fit-out, well-designed meeting rooms, and a venue for offsites, all without eating into their own leased square footage. For landlords still on the fence about investing in a flex offering, that ranking is a useful data point: flex now sits right behind the true essentials in what tenants say they want from a building.
Enterprise tenants are buying a relationship, not a floorplan
Perhaps the most striking anecdote from the session came from Yardi’s Will Sanford, who described a conversation with the head of real estate at a fast-growing AI company whose footprint expanded from 250,000 to nearly 2 million square feet in just two years. That tenant rarely commits to a location for more than 24 months and installs its own access and security systems whenever a lease runs longer than 12 months. Her framing, as Sanford relayed it, was simple: they are looking for operating partners who can scale alongside them.
That kind of tenant isn’t buying square footage, design, or furniture quality. They’re buying confidence that an operator can move fast, manage the account well, and keep pace with rapidly changing needs. It’s not a fit for every flex provider, but for operators chasing high-growth enterprise clients, it’s a clear signal of what actually closes the deal.
What this means for the market
Taken together, these four data points paint a picture of a flex market that is still early in its growth curve, expanding fastest among smaller operators, increasingly valued by landlords as a leasing tool, and increasingly judged by enterprise tenants on relationship quality rather than square footage. For anyone tracking where the office market is headed, whether operators sizing up expansion, landlords weighing a flex investment, or enterprise tenants scoping their next move, these numbers offer a useful, data-backed reality check on how much room the sector still has to run.
