Savills Becomes The Latest Broker To Challenge WeWork And Launch Flexible Office Brand

Savills has joined CBRE in launching its own flexible office brand, as real estate brokers look to muscle in on the turf of big coworking and serviced office firms.

The listed agency firm has launched a new service line called Pivot. It will offer the service to UK landlords, who can use it to provide fully fitted out, turnkey office space for tenants.

It will target tenants looking for 40 workstations or more, meaning it will target midsize companies and above rather than coworking space for startups. Savills said that the division would be able to provide an office for a client in six to eight weeks and it would incorporate branding and design, fit-out, IT and facilities management services, at a fixed all-inclusive price point for tenants.

The division will be run by Charlie Wardroper, who joined Savills in December and whose CV includes stints at serviced office firms IWG and the Instant Group.

“Pivot affords landlords an alternative way to cater to those customers who don’t want conventional space and/or prefer not to be a customer of a serviced office operator,” he said in a statement.

In November CBRE opened Hana, the first major broker to launch a flexible office division. It signed its first deal in February for a space in Dallas, and is planning to roll out to 25 cities, with London on the agenda at some point. 

CBRE said it will enter into revenue-sharing agreements with landlords who use the service. Savills did not provide details on how it would charge for the service.

Myriad landlords including Tishman Speyer, Ivanhoé Cambridge, British Land and Landsec have also launched their own flexible office brands, to try and capture for themselves the value being created by operators like WeWork or The Office Group, which is itself owned by Blackstone.