A New Way Forward For Landlords

With traditional leases for now, a thing of the past, Landlords themselves are stuck between a rock and a hard place. With tenants cautious of long term financial liabilities, and uncertainty of employee office requirements, demand for a traditional lease has all but stopped. Other the other aspect there are management agreements. A management agreement can be a big undertaking for a landlord, with restrictions, and perhaps with requirements for unwanted branding or associations, or requirements for extensive fitouts.

A potential third solution is a flexible partnership that may be the stopgap for some of London’s biggest landlords, says Edward Griffin of WorkPad, who work with some of London’s biggest estates including Shaftesbury, Grosvenor and Langham. The flexibility and agility provided by smaller providers such as WorkPad enables them to move quickly and efficiently in securing new office space, turning empty space into revenue generating space with immediate effect. All done without a weighty management agreement to tie both parties down long term.

In particular, WorkPad’s white label approach to managed offices means that landlords can take advantage of the commercial opportunities without tying their brand, or another’s, to their mast with the risk of diminishing their brand.

Edward Griffin says “There’s no shortage and piles of managements agreements for landlords, but what’s missing now is flexibility in serviced office partnerships. Take what’s available, a room, a floor, a building, and make it available now, with no restrictions, no long term commitments. Pure flexibility for both Landlords and tenants.”

Griffin sees this as the way forward in the short term, at least, to help landlords and managed office providers out of the crisis.WorkPad are the leading high-end, private, period and bespoke office space provider within Central London, providing private and unbranded spaces for clients to create their own identify. The business continues to concentrate in the London market, with a long term vision to expand in the UK and then Europe and the rest of the world.