Flex Office Occupancy Hits a Record 85% as Companies Rethink Space

For the last few years, flexible office space has been the safety valve in corporate real estate plans. Unsure how many people will come in, or how many you will employ in three years? Sign a smaller core lease and keep the rest flexible. New data suggests that valve is getting tight. The flex market is now fuller than it has ever been, and the companies using it are behaving less like short-term tenants and more like permanent ones.

The Flexmark 2026 report from Workthere, the flexible office advisory arm of Savills, surveyed 199 operators across 39 countries in June and July. It found global flex occupancy at a record 85%, up from 81% a year earlier. Some 86% of operators run at 80% occupancy or higher, and 21% run at 90% or above. San Francisco leads at 97%, up from 90% in 2025, with Madrid at 91% and London and New York at 90% each.

Flex Space Is No Longer the Temporary Option

The most telling numbers in the report are about how flex space is being used. Members now attend an average of 3.8 days a week, up from about three days in 2022, compared with 3.6 days for traditional offices. More than a fifth (22%) come in five days a week, up from 16% in 2022. Corporate customers stay an average of 3.9 years, longer than scale-ups at 3.2 years and start-ups and smaller firms at 2.6 years. Almost a quarter of multinationals looking for flex space want more than 200 desks.

Those are not the habits of companies parking overflow teams for a few months. They describe large employers running core operations out of flexible space, and using it more intensively than their own leased offices. That matters for anyone counting on flex capacity to absorb future growth, because the space they assumed would be waiting is increasingly occupied by someone else’s long-term team.

Supply is growing, but not fast enough to change the picture. According to Hubble’s Q3 2026 U.S. National Office Report, as covered by Allwork.Space, U.S. coworking inventory rose by a net 2 million square feet in the third quarter to 168.4 million square feet, and the number of locations rose by 228 to 9,612. Coworking now accounts for 2.5% of U.S. office inventory, up from 2.3% a quarter earlier. The national average asking price for a private office desk was $651 a month, and $891 in Manhattan. Meanwhile, traditional office vacancy held at 17.8% after five straight quarters of decline, so the conventional market is not getting looser either.

The Operators Are Changing the Deal Too

On the supply side, the business model behind flex space is shifting toward landlords. Half of operators now prefer management agreements as their growth model, up from 44% in 2023, and 48% expect those agreements to shape the sector over the next five years. Another 35% anticipate growth in landlord-operated flex brands. Workthere also found 76% of operators plan to expand over the next year and 67% expect greater use of AI in workspace operations.

For occupiers, that has two implications. First, more flex capacity will sit inside buildings owned by the same landlords they negotiate core leases with, which makes it worth discussing flexible terms and on-site flex options in the same conversation. Second, companies holding surplus space of their own have a growing set of partners who can help turn it into a managed flex floor rather than a dead cost on the books.

Most Companies Still Cannot See How Their Space Is Used

Buying flex space well depends on knowing how existing space performs, and that is where many organizations fall short. As UC Today reported this month, CBRE’s 2026 workplace research puts average global utilization at 53%, while a JLL benchmark puts it at 56% against a 74% target. JLL also found that 92% of organizations rely heavily on badge swipes, yet only 7% rate their workplace data capability as excellent. A Wakefield Research survey of 400 U.S. real estate, workplace and facilities leaders found just 19% primarily use data for space planning decisions, and 52% say uncertainty about usage has delayed or killed an expansion.

The people who run the workplace are often not working from the same data either. A Logitech study conducted by The Harris Poll among 1,700 workplace decision-makers found only 24% of organizations involve IT and AV teams before space planning begins. Technical meeting issues cause a median productivity loss of 12.2 minutes per person, and only 58% of leaders feel confident they have the ROI data to justify workplace investments. Henry Levak, general manager of Team Workspace Solutions at Logitech, put it plainly: “When these three functions run on separate tracks, no one owns the friction problem.”

Hybrid patterns make the measurement harder still. Gallup finds 52% of remote-capable U.S. employees are hybrid, spending about 2.3 days a week on site. A portfolio that serves a 2.3-day week, a five-day team and a flex floor at 3.8 days needs better occupancy data than a badge count can provide.

The Flexible Space Playbook

• Treat flex capacity as scarce: With occupancy at 85% globally and 90% or more in major cities, secure flexible space for planned growth early instead of assuming it will be available on demand.
• Budget flex at its real cost: At an average of $651 per desk per month in the U.S. and $891 in Manhattan, flex is a premium product. Model it against the full cost of conventional space, not just base rent.
• Negotiate flex and core together: As landlords move into management agreements and their own flex brands, ask for on-site flexible options in the same deal as the core lease.
• Put underused floors to work: If your own utilization trails your plan, consider a managed flex model for surplus space rather than carrying it empty.
• Plan space with IT, HR and facilities in one room: Only 24% involve IT and AV before planning starts. Bringing them in early avoids retrofits and the meeting failures that cost minutes every session.
• Fix the occupancy data first: Only 7% of organizations rate their workplace data capability as excellent. Reliable utilization data has to come before any automated space decision.

The flexible layer in most office strategies was meant to be the easy part. At record occupancy, with members coming in more often than employees in traditional offices, it now needs the same planning discipline as the core lease. The companies that know how their space is really used will be the ones still able to find flexibility when they need it.