A New Playing Field Is Emerging as Tenant Demand for Flexible Workplaces Rises Sharply

The Nordic and global office markets are undergoing a fundamental transformation that is not only about rising vacancies, but also about the more elusive metric of utilisation. Following the pandemic’s “work-from-anywhere” revolution, many offices are used at only 30–50% of their capacity. As leases expire, many occupiers see an opportunity to right-size their offices. Paradoxically, this downsizing creates new challenges, such as capacity constraints when too many employees want to be on site at the same time, or a shortage of meeting rooms when a company’s own facilities no longer suffice.

Flexible space, once viewed as a niche alternative to traditional leases, has begun to evolve into an established part of both tenants’ and landlords’ considerations. As the market changes, a decisive question arises for landlords: how should they act? The answer lies in moving beyond the traditional leasing model.

For tenants, the shift means a desire for an adjustable portfolio of workplaces over time: touch-down spaces close to home, meeting capacity that complements the headquarters, project environments for temporary teams, and hubs for hybrid work. For landlords, it means a shift from passive leasing to a platform that also delivers extra capacity, service, and real-time data. Simply offering square metres is no longer enough—you must provide flexibility alongside functionality. The challenge is not to “hand over” the flex business to third-party coworking operators, but to meet customers’ needs yourself.

Optimal customer value arises when the core footprint is combined with a layer of flexible space and services that can be activated on demand—guided by demand data, dynamically priced, and accessed through seamless digital interfaces. This requires portfolio logic rather than single-asset thinking, and an operating model that can scale across multiple contractual forms: from long-term leases to subscriptions and on-demand solutions.

The Pioneers Show the Way

In this dynamic market, a group of visionary landlords—so-called Brandlords—have taken the lead. Players such as Boston Properties (BXP), British Land (Storey), Vasakronan (Arena), Fabege (WAW/CoW) and Antilooppi have built successful proprietary flex brands that clearly demonstrate value creation.

Boston Properties in the United States illustrates the transformation particularly well. As early as around 2019, BXP identified more than 110 active subleases in its Boston portfolio—in practice, smaller companies subletting from primary tenants. This revealed a significant “invisible” demand for flexible solutions that the traditional model was failing to capture.

In response, BXP launched its own concept, FLEX by BXP, and began systematically converting areas into plug-and-play solutions. The focus was on shorter terms, rapid move-in, and modular spaces that can be adapted to projects and team sizes. In doing so, BXP captured demand that had previously flowed to the sublease market and external coworking operators.

The results are precise: FLEX spaces achieve rent premiums of around 60% (USD 80 per square foot compared with USD 50 for traditional short-term deals) and maintain strong occupancy even in weaker market conditions. Turnover is also high—flex floors let in roughly a month, compared with significantly longer cycles for traditional space.

BXP’s journey shows how a landlord can move from reactively managing the sublease market to proactively creating a proprietary product line, deepening both revenues and customer relationships.

A New Era for the Office

This development marks more than a structural shift—it is a strategic re-evaluation of what the modern office should be and how value is created, maintained, and scaled within it.

We are facing a future in which the value of office space is no longer measured in square metres but in usage and perceived function. Those who systematically combine a controllable core with a well-calibrated flex layer—supported by scalable operations and data-driven management—achieve higher rent premiums, faster absorption, deeper client relationships, and more resilient portfolios across market cycles.

From Traditional Letting to the Brandlord Model

Today, an increasing number of landlords have built—and are building—their own brands for flexible workplaces and fitted, serviced offices, rather than ceding the flex segment to third-party operators. They are integrating flexible and shared spaces within their assets to offer a dynamic combination of traditional leases supplemented by flex space, often packaged as part of a services proposition.

“Plus, Not Versus”

Leading Brandlords such as Boston Properties apply a “plus, not versus” strategy—they are not abandoning long-term leases, but complementing them with a flex layer. The strategy serves several purposes: capturing additional demand segments, meeting existing tenants’ short-term needs, and optimising asset performance during market swings. The model demonstrates that flex space can serve both as a revenue engine and a loyalty tool—many flex tenants are subsidiaries or project teams of existing long-term customers.

In London, British Land was early with Storey (2017), followed by Landsec with MYO (2019), and thereafter Great Portland Estates with Fully Managed and CEG with Let Ready. London’s role as a global finance and tech hub, coupled with demand for shorter terms and competition from players such as WeWork, created a favourable environment for owner-led flex initiatives. London is now the world’s most mature flex market, where flex accounts for roughly 10% of the city’s office stock.

In the Nordics, the development came somewhat later but with a similar strategic direction. Castellum took its first step in 2019 by acquiring United Spaces. The same year, Vasakronan launched its coworking concept, Arena. Shortly thereafter, Antilooppi in Helsinki introduced POOL and Fabege in Stockholm launched WAW and later CoW. A strong focus on quality, sustainability, and a holistic tenant experience distinguishes Nordic initiatives.

Today, British Land, Landsec and Great Portland Estates operate significant flex portfolios with impressive occupancy (around 85–90%) and rents approximately 20% higher than traditional space. In the UK, these landlords are referred to as “Brandlords”, signalling that the owners themselves build both the brand and the customer journey around flex spaces.

To understand this evolution more deeply, we need to rewind and analyse how tenants’ office needs have changed. Brandlord initiatives took shape even before the pandemic, but it was the pandemic’s impact and the hybrid mode of working that truly accelerated their development.

The Tenant’s Needs: A Dynamic Portfolio of Workplaces

Many companies today require a multifaceted portfolio of workplaces, where each element serves a specific strategic purpose. Companies such as Allstate, BP, Santander, Google, Husqvarna, Scania, Zuora, Atlassian and GitHub demonstrate how different portfolios can function in practice, combining fixed space, enterprise-run coworking hubs, community-based environments, and access to on-demand coworking locally, nationally, and globally.

The headquarters remains essential, serving as the cultural and organisational anchor—a place where brand identity, leadership, and everyday rituals are expressed. Increasingly, however, the HQ is not designed as a traditional “desk factory” but as a “flagship store”. Employees are drawn to high-quality design, excellent service, and unique experiences. The core footprint remains a powerful recruitment tool and a physical manifestation of organisational culture and brand. This footprint remains strategically important for both landlord and tenant, and it is still signed on multi-year terms, even if the area tends to be smaller than historically.

Flex Becomes Critical When Proximity and Convenience Rule

Hybrid working has made proximity and convenience central components of workplace strategy. Many companies, therefore, complement their headquarters with smaller flex hubs close to employees’ homes. These hubs are less formal than the HQ, yet more social and collaborative than the home office. They function as a practical middle ground for focused work, meetings, and spontaneous teamwork.

Flex hubs also help to offload the HQ. This can be achieved through “overflow capacity”—an agreed buffer of extra desks or meeting hours—or through discounted access to coworking space and meeting rooms in the same building, nearby, or in other locations. An attractive concept for tenants is to build 15–20% peak capacity into their core agreements, giving them access to additional workplaces beyond their base footprint. This allows them to manage days when more people than usual are on site without bearing the cost of permanently underutilised space.

The outcome is shorter commutes, more balanced utilisation, and a better day-to-day experience for employees—while the company avoids tying up capital in unnecessarily large base space.

Boston Properties’ experience shows an additional dimension: existing tenants increasingly require temporary space for special projects, “swing space” during refurbishments, or separate areas for innovation teams. They found that many flex tenants are “subsidiaries or teams of long-term customers” with specific projects. This type of bridge space is particularly valuable during refurbishments and fit-outs, M&A integrations, product launches, and other periods of rapid scaling up or down—when teams need temporary space without committing to long-term contracts.

Reach and Flexibility

Not all employees are tied to an office or a hub. Field-based and client-facing roles—such as sales, consulting, account management, audit, or recruitment—often need ad hoc access to meeting rooms or workplaces near the client location. Here, coworking networks and day passes serve as the workplace “last mile”: delivering capacity the same day, in the right place and at the right time, without the company having to open new offices.

To make this work in practice—without creating administrative friction—a technical solution is required that combines policy and governance with smooth user journeys. This means the organisation can set parameters for budget and approved operators while employees enjoy a simple experience via SSO login, intuitive booking, automated invoicing, and standardised reporting. In this way, usage is easy for the individual and controllable for the company.

Landlords can also play a central role. Those with portfolios across multiple locations can offer tenants a unified flex proposition with geographic reach. A landlord with limited reach can also build strategic partnerships with other landlords to deliver a similar proposition together.

Taken together, each component plays a clear role: the HQ builds culture and identity; hubs create proximity and everyday rhythm; and coworking networks provide reach and agility where business actually happens. Together they form a balanced portfolio that combines cost efficiency, employee experience, and adaptability—and that can be managed and developed in a data-driven way as ways of working and behaviours evolve.

What Is a Brandlord?

A Brandlord is a landlord who has integrated flexible workplace products—such as coworking spaces, meeting rooms, event venues, studios, and fitted, serviced offices—under an in-house brand. The offering is operated by the landlord, not by a third party. Flex spaces may be located within a single building or across a portfolio and are marketed under names such as Storey (British Land), MYO (Landsec), POOL (Antilooppi), FLEX by BXP (Boston Properties), United Spaces (Castellum) and Arena (Vasakronan). These brands signal a specific service level and clear differentiation.

Brandlords are particularly common in London and constitute a growing share of the flex market.

Tenants typically sign short licences or management agreements that allow the space to be adapted over time. This differs from traditional coworking or serviced office concepts because the landlord retains operational control, brand equity, and data—while capturing a greater share of the upside.

Drivers Behind Becoming a Brandlord

Several strong forces are pushing landlords to develop their own brands and become Brandlords:

Portfolio risk and “flight-to-quality” are two parallel trends affecting the office market:

• Traditional leases: Companies are leaving older, less attractive buildings in favour of modern assets with high-quality, firm ESG profiles, and better locations. The flight-to-quality phenomenon helps premium assets maintain or strengthen their appeal, while older spaces risk becoming difficult to let.
  
  

• Flexibility: At the same time, shorter terms and flexible conditions are in demand, even in premium locations. Tenants want to be able to adjust their footprint over time.

A clear example of how this dynamic can be implemented in practice is Boston Properties. Around 2019, the company identified more than 110 active subleases in its own buildings—often small spaces with short durations—where BXP lacked a direct customer relationship. By launching FLEX by BXP, they were able to capture this “invisible” demand, build direct relationships with tenants, and create bridges to larger commitments over time.

The dynamic contains both risk and opportunity. The risk is that the space that fails to meet quality and flexibility requirements quickly loses tenants. The opportunity is to combine traditional leases with an in-house flex offering under the landlord’s own brand—an option that is increasingly becoming the first choice. Market data underscores the shift: since 2019, the supply of “managed offices” in the UK has increased by 895%, and in 2024, management agreements accounted for 41% of new deals (up from 9% before the pandemic).

Another driver is the shift to hybrid working and the talent competition. Hybrid working has not made the HQ less important—quite the opposite. When people can choose where they work, the HQ becomes an even more important place for building culture, identity, and community. It must be a destination employees want to return to—one that offers energy, belonging, and an experience they cannot get at home.

At the same time, the HQ needs to be complemented with equally welcoming flex capacity. Overflow areas, hubs, and coworking should not merely be functional back-ups but environments where employees genuinely enjoy spending time, meeting, and collaborating effectively. When both the HQ and flex spaces are high quality, the result is a physical workplace portfolio that strengthens relationships, increases presence, and makes it easier to entice people back for shared office days.

Plug-and-play and cost efficiency reinforce the logic. More and more companies seek to avoid high capex and time-consuming fit-out projects. Fully furnished and equipped offices with service enable rapid move-in without significant investment—especially suitable for projects, growth companies, and international players. Owners who offer plug-and-play on flexible terms lower the barriers and create clear competitive advantages.

Finally, flex can function as an incubator for future long-term deals. Boston Properties shows, for example, how flex areas can serve as an effective growth pipeline. Their client Constant Contact began with a small short-term suite but later expanded to 250,000 square feet as a long-term customer.

Operating Models and Product Strategies: Building a Sustainable Flex Business

To implement brand-led flexible workplaces successfully, it is essential to start from:

• Business logic

• Operating model and contract structure

• Product strategy

Business Logic: Revenue-Driven or Amenity-Driven?

When developing flex space, consider whether the area(s) should primarily function as a commercial revenue engine or as an amenity to strengthen the asset’s attractiveness and tenant loyalty. This is a fundamental choice that guides your operating model and product strategy.

• Commercial logic: Focus on revenue and returns. To achieve solid profitability as a revenue engine, larger footprints are often needed—typically around 1,500–2,000 sq m—to achieve the economies of scale required. This makes it possible to cover rent, operations, technology, and staffing more efficiently while delivering returns comparable to, or higher than, traditional leases. This logic can also include tenant prioritisation, for example, by guaranteeing meeting-room access or offering discounts to existing tenants. Although this may mean the direct revenue per square metre is not maximised, it enhances the asset’s appeal, increases customer loyalty, and supports higher retention across the portfolio.
  
  

• Amenity logic: Often, smaller areas (under 1,000 sq m) can be justified when the primary goal is to enhance the building’s overall value by offering sought-after amenities such as meeting rooms, lounges, event areas or wellness facilities. Here, the aim is not primarily to maximise revenue on each square metre but to increase customer loyalty, attract new tenants, and secure retention.

  
  

• Hybrid approach: Boston Properties illustrates a third path that combines both. Their flex floors generate significant rent premiums (60% over traditional short-term deals) whilst also functioning as an amenity that strengthens retention. The model shows that even relatively small flex footprints (2–5% of a building’s area) can produce meaningful financial impact and deepen relationships with existing customers.
  
  

Operating Models and Contract Structures: Allocating Risk and Control

The choice of operating model and contractual form affects risk, revenue sharing, and how much control the owner retains.

Operating models (operations):

• Owner-operated (complete control): The landlord handles staffing, service, and day-to-day operations. This affords complete control over brand and experience and maximum upside—but the owner assumes the entire operational risk.
  
  

• Operator under the owner’s brand (controlled outsourcing): A partner handles operations and staffing according to the owner’s concept, brand, and service levels. Can be combined with various contract structures.

Contract structures (risk/revenue):

• Management agreement (shared control, shared risk/upside): The owner retains the space and brand strategy; the operator runs the business for a fixed fee and/or a revenue share (e.g., infinitSpace, IWG).
  
  

• Profit share/hybrid (aligned incentives): Owner and operator share risk and upside (e.g., Convene, Runway East).
  
  

• Franchise (brand licence): The owner uses an established external brand and its processes for a fee. A fast route to market without building a brand from scratch (e.g., Venture X, Serendipity Labs).
  
  

• Lease: Traditional—the owner lets the space to an external operator. Low risk for the owner but no share of the upside and a weaker direct customer relationship (e.g., WeWork, Convendum, Helio).
  
  

Product Strategies – Five Successful Flex Concepts

Depending on the chosen business logic, operating model, and contract, several product strategies can be used. The concepts can be combined within the same portfolio to reach different target groups and needs—a robust tiered portfolio of spaces and services.

Compact Flex

• Size: 250–1,000 sq m

• Content: Core needs—meeting rooms, lounge, smaller event area, possibly a few private offices

• Operations: Innovative, cost-efficient structure—can be unstaffed or staffed on certain hours/days

• Logic: Often amenity-driven, but can work in a hybrid form where revenue covers costs

Full-Scale Coworking/Flex Hub

• Size: 2,000–5,000+ sq m

• Content: Open coworking, private offices, meeting rooms, event areas, café, and broad service functions

• Location: Often in/near larger buildings. Examples: British Land (Storey), Antilooppi (POOL), Vasakronan (Arena), Castellum (United Spaces).

• Logic: Primarily commercial; high quality/service also strengthens interest in adjacent traditional offices

Fully Furnished, Serviced Offices (Managed Offices)

• Target group: Teams of roughly 10–100 people seeking plug-and-play

• Offering: Fully furnished/equipped with coworking-like services (reception, cleaning, IT, bookable meeting rooms)

• Business effect: Often delivers premium rents and rapid move-in; tenants avoid capex. Elevates the overall experience

• Logic: Revenue-driven and strategic amenity

Specialised/Niche Coworking Concepts

• Focus: Sector-specific environments (life sciences, fintech, start-ups, gaming, music)

• Execution: Often in close collaboration with clusters/institutions

• Size: Usually 1,500+ sq m for viability and community

• Examples: Mission Kitchen (food), Until (wellness), Epicenter (tech), STIM (music)

• Logic: Primarily commercial—while also strengthening the owner’s brand in chosen segments and building loyalty

Meetings and Events

• Size: From a handful of meeting rooms to studios, rooftops, and full conference venues

• Attraction: Enhances a building’s value with modern meeting environments for tenants and external customers. Often, the portfolio’s most visible customer interface and a key tenant offering

• Business logic: Either as a commercial venture (external sales, dynamic pricing) or as an amenity with prioritised access for tenants

  
  

Market Insights

United Kingdom

London remains the epicentre of the European flex market. According to the London Flex Brand Index 2024, the city is seen as a mature market where landlord-led brands—often called Brandlords—have emerged alongside established coworking operators.

The first significant initiatives arrived in the late 2010s:

• British Land launched Storey in 2017.

• Landsec introduced MYO in 2019.

• Shaftesbury developed Assemble around the same period.

Zoe Ellis-Moore (2022) describes how these players control the brand and customer journey while sometimes outsourcing operations to third-party operators. The results have been precise: portfolios have proliferated, occupancy often remains stable at 85–90%, and rents can be up to 20% above traditional offices. As a result, brand-led flex has become a central part of the business strategy of several of the UK’s largest institutional landlords, often integrated into their broader campus environments in the City and West End. Brandlords have an average amenity score of 6.5, higher than the average for other serviced office brands.

Nordics

The Nordics have also gained momentum, with similar logic adapted to local market conditions. Expansion is more selective, but a strong emphasis on sustainability, quality, and portfolio integration characterises initiatives. A few key players:

• Castellum acquired United Spaces in 2019, an established coworking concept present in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Uppsala and beyond.

• Vasakronan launched Arena in 2019, which today is one of the Nordics’ most extensive networks, combining coworking space with private flex offices and a digital platform for booking and community.

• Antilooppi (Finland) introduced POOL in 2019/2020, with several units in Helsinki on a similar scale to UK coworking centres.

• Fabege followed in 2020 with WAW (Work Away from Work)—portfolio-wide hubs—and CoW (Coworking) with private offices, meeting rooms, and services.

• Sponda has operated MOW (Mothership of Work) in Helsinki for some time, with a community-oriented profile.

• Alecta Fastigheter (Sweden) has, in recent years, launched its own coworking initiatives integrated into existing buildings as added value for tenants.

Developments in both the UK and the Nordics show that brand-led flex has moved from experiment to strategic tool for deepening customer relationships, increasing asset attractiveness, and creating new revenue streams. The differences lie mainly in scale and pace: London is mature and international; the Nordics are characterised by fewer but well-developed concepts, with an emphasis on sustainability and tenant customisation.

Brandlord: A Strategy That Creates Value on Both Sides of the Lease

The combination of traditional leases and flexible workplaces is at the heart of the Brandlord strategy, where the offering meets the tenant’s evolving needs. The logic is simple: create value on two fronts simultaneously. Landlords can optimise utilisation and increase returns, while tenants gain workplaces that can expand or contract in line with the business.

The landlord wins:

• Stronger value creation: When core areas are complemented by flexibility, usage per square meter rises. Studies by CBRE and JLL show that flex can achieve rents 10–20% higher than traditional offices, with occupancy stable around 85–90% in mature markets such as London. According to GPE, annualised NOI from their flex portfolio increased by 93% to £19 million.
  
  

• Greater attractiveness: Tenants can lease an optimised core footprint with guaranteed access to extra space in the same building—often also at other addresses. This elastic solution enables tenants to remain through periods of growth or contraction, thereby strengthening competitiveness as demand for long, static contracts has decreased.
  
  

• Longer relationships: With flex options, tenants can adapt their presence without moving, reducing vacancy risk. The Instant Group reports that customer relationships are extended on average by up to 30% when flex options are integrated within the same building as the core footprint.
  
  

• Faster letting and lower vacancy risk: BXP shows that flex spaces let significantly quicker than traditional space—full occupancy in a month—protecting cash flows during market changes and reducing the carrying risk of vacancies. Flex also acts as a “shock absorber” in downturns—BXP’s flex suites remained stable during COVID while traditional office occupancy lagged.

The tenant wins:

• Lower risk and better cost control: Uncertainty around space becomes manageable. Instead of over-leasing for future growth or being stuck in oversized premises, the footprint can be matched to actual use and complemented with flex.
  
  

• Support for hybrid work: Access to hubs, meeting rooms, and support services facilitates coordination across office, home, and external locations. This improves the employee experience and strengthens the employer brand in the war for talent.
  
  

• Access to premium services: Flex spaces often offer shared reception, event areas, lounges, and wellness amenities that would otherwise be difficult or costly to carry alone.
  
  

• Immediate move-in and scalability: BXP’s model provides further benefits: move-in without capex for furniture/IT, and easy expansion or contraction within the same building. Particularly valuable for growth companies, project teams, or organisations in transition.

By combining traditional leases with flex, a symbiosis is created. The asset becomes an “elastic band”—stable when needed, flexible when the business requires it. For owners, this means higher revenues and longer relationships; for tenants, assurance, agility, and workplaces for the hybrid era.

Challenges with Flex—and How to Address Them

Valuation and Financing

Flex revenues are often perceived as less secure than long leases, leading banks and investors to be more cautious. The Urban Land Institute also notes that flex space can be more expensive to build and is sometimes treated as vacant in valuations. The solution is to integrate flex into the leasing strategy and demonstrate how it strengthens income from core areas. By tracking actual demand and utilisation, owners can show that a mix of core and flex increases, rather than reduces, value. Lenders and valuers are also moving towards operating cash flow/EBITDA-based methods rather than relying solely on ERV.

Boston Properties’ ability to achieve 60% rent premiums, rapid letting, and strong occupancy in weak markets demonstrates the model’s financial resilience. Even if flex often accounts for <1% of the total portfolio, it can generate a disproportionately large return and strengthen a building’s overall performance.

Investment and Transition

A study of 250 UK office owners highlights transition costs (52%), planning process (33%), and regulation (31%) as the most significant barriers to flex. In addition, 20% lack resources/skills for flexible operations. The recommendation is a gradual approach: refurbish portions of buildings to retain rental income during the transition, explore tailored financing, and collaborate with operators/specialists. Flex can also create value in hard-to-let parts of a building.

Start small, scale gradually: BXP often allocates just one floor (or part thereof)—around 2–5% of a building’s area—to flex. This enables testing, customer feedback, and fine-tuning before scaling up, while minimising cannibalisation of long-term leases.

Service and Community

Flex tenants expect more than just desks—they want networks, programming, and high-quality service. Many landlords, however, have limited experience in community-building. One way forward is to recruit staff with hospitality backgrounds or engage experienced operators for the customer experience, while the owner retains ownership of brand, pricing, and data. This becomes particularly important in larger flex units where service quality and culture are critical to retention.

BXP’s experience shows that a “hospitality-lite” operation often suffices. The emphasis is on frictionless move-in (turn-key with pre-provisioned furniture, enterprise IT, Wi-Fi and security), short and standardised agreements with digital signatures, a unified service channel with defined SLAs and rapid response, and modular spaces that can be scaled up or down without renegotiation. The aim is not to build a heavy events apparatus but to remove friction and maintain a professional standard consistent with Class A locations. The effect is shorter time-to-occupancy, higher customer satisfaction, and more stable, predictable revenues.

Technology and Administration

A flex concept is fundamentally a software-driven offering. To work at scale, a coherent digital chain is required for onboarding tenants and their employees, access management, simple booking, payment, and follow-up. Traditional property systems are rarely sufficient: onboarding becomes uneven, micro-payments get stuck, permissions become unclear, and decision support is inadequate. The result is user friction and weaker controllability for the owner.

The challenge is to find a technical solution that creates simplicity for the landlord, the tenant, and the employee, enabling operational efficiency. With a robust technical foundation, the offering becomes visible where demand exists, booking and administration become intuitive for users, and the owner gains a controllable, data-driven flow that can be optimised over time.

Distribution, Demand, and Simplicity

In the flex business, outcomes are determined by two factors: visibility and friction. If the offering is not easy to find, spaces become under-utilised; if the booking experience is clunky, users turn to open channels (e.g., Google/marketplaces) and you get platform leakage—revenue, data, and customer relationships flow outside your control, while pricing logic and brand experience fragment.

The countermeasure involves owning the demand flow through a digital solution that connects tenants and their employees with the entire portfolio. Such a solution should include a seamless booking flow, simple access management, automated payments, dynamic pricing, and capacity control per building and time period. The result is a controllable, data-driven flow that makes flex a profitable, value-creating product—higher utilisation, better margins, and a cohesive customer experience that scales across the portfolio.

From Insight to Action: A Starter Guide for Landlords

Building a brand-led flexible approach does not have to be a complex transformation from the outset. On the contrary, experiences from pioneers in both the UK and the Nordics show that you can start small, experiment, and develop the concept over time.

Here are some principles to get started—and to build step by step:

Principles for getting started:

• Start simple: Pilot on a single floor, a few hundred square metres, or within an existing coworking environment. Treat it as a pilot to understand demand and pricing. Learn and scale.

  
  

• Learn from BXP: Allocate 2–5% of a building’s area—often one floor—to flex. The measurable success (rapid letting, premium rents) validates the incremental model.
  
  

• Know your tenants: Map actual needs—meetings, projects, smaller offices—and tailor the offering. Include flex options in longer leases to drive adoption.
  
  

• Surface “invisible” tenants: Follow BXP’s method—inventory subleases and short-term needs in the portfolio. Identify small businesses in secondary arrangements, short-term needs among existing customers, and external growth companies that can be drawn in.
  
  

• Embed flex in the portfolio: Make flex a natural part of the total proposition. Provide access to multiple addresses in the same city. Use flex for hard-to-let space.
  
  

• “Plus, not versus”: Complement long-term leases with flex to serve short-term needs, capture new segments, and provide flexibility during volatility.
  
  

• Keep it modular: Invest in movable furniture and solutions. Let lounges become hot-desking, which can then evolve into small private offices. Think “elastic building”.
  
  

• Invest early in technology: Choose a platform that makes the experience seamless for owners, tenants, and their employees. Start with booking, digital keys, and communications; scale towards sensors and smart buildings.
  
  

• Prioritise enterprise infrastructure: Deliver secure IT with dedicated VLANs. This differentiates from simpler coworking and justifies a premium.
  
  

• Focus on hospitality: Ensure a host presence on set days and implement simple community initiatives to scale service in line with demand.
  
  

• Plan the pipeline effect: Today’s flex customer can become tomorrow’s long-term customer. Design flex as a relationship engine and internal incubator.
  
  

Conclusion

The Brandlord model is more than a trend—it is a fundamental shift towards operational real estate strategies that prioritise customer relationships, flexibility, and value creation. Pioneers such as Boston Properties, British Land, and Vasakronan show that owners who embrace this can achieve multiple goals simultaneously: premium rents, stronger loyalty, lower vacancy risk, and a sharper competitive position.

The evidence is strong: flex can generate 20–60% rent premiums and let significantly faster than traditional space. More importantly, flex acts as a relationship engine that deepens ties with existing tenants and incubates future growth. “Plus, not versus”—complement rather than replace—creates a robust portfolio strategy that performs across cycles.

Success requires thoughtfulness and balance between immediate returns and long-term strategy. Start small, deliver operational excellence, invest in the right technology, and design for flexibility. See flex as part of the unified tenant experience—not a standalone product.

As hybrid ways of working become entrenched and expectations evolve, the Brandlord advantage strengthens further. Owners who now integrate flex under their own brands are best positioned to capture the opportunity—and to build more resilient, valuable portfolios.

The transformation from traditional landlord to Brandlord is not merely about adding flex—it is about rethinking the entire tenant relationship and positioning property ownership as a dynamic, service-oriented business. In the new reality, those who can deliver both the stability tenants need and the flexibility they increasingly demand will win.

Sources and Inspiration

This article is based on a combination of our own analyses, public company reports, and sector insights from articles, interviews, and research. Key sources include:

• Boston Properties: Investor reports, quarterly presentations, and management interviews (2023–2025), public statements by Bryan Koop (EVP Boston), Owen Thomas (CEO), and Doug Linde (President) and coverage in Boston Real Estate Times and Boston Business Journal on FLEX by BXP

• Brave Ideas podcast with Bryan Koop on flex strategy

• Industry analyses by JLL, CBRE, and CommercialEdge on flex trends

• Allwork.Space – “UK flex market defies CRE trends with 895% growth” (2024)

• Lexology / Reed Smith – articles (2023–2024) on coworking and spec suites

• British Land Annual Report 2025, Landsec Annual Report 2024, GPE RNS releases

• Spacestoplaces.co.uk – London Flex Brand Index 2024

• Zoe Ellis-Moore (2022) on the rise of Brandlords

• www.vasakronan.se, www.antilooppi.fi, www.sponda.fi, www.unitedspaces.se, www.fabege.se

• Industry research by Tashi Dorjee on flex operations

• Urban Land Institute – studies on flexible workplaces

• The Instant Group – reports on the development of the flex market

• https://spacestoplaces.co.uk/resources/reports/

• Various advisors’ market analyses