438. What JLL and Yardi Numbers Say About Flex Growth

**Resources mentioned on this podcast:** The 2026 Coworking Benchmark Session Scott Homa (JLL) Will Sanford (Yardi) What if the fastest-growing segment in coworking is operators with two to six locations? The keynote that opened this year's Global Workspace Association conference in Denver was Scott Homa, who leads flex research at JLL, and Will Sanford, the head of coworking at Yardi. The two companies track this market with different datasets and different methods, and they landed in almost exactly the same place. Scott is known for the headline that 30% of office inventory would be flexible by 2030. He explained where it came from: JLL asked occupiers how they wanted their portfolios split, and they said 30%. It was a demand number, not a forecast of how much flex space would get built. Flex is about 2.3% of the U.S. office market today. In this episode, I walk through the numbers from that keynote and what they mean for your growth plan. I talk about: • Where the 30% by 2030 number came from, and why it was never a supply forecast • Flex today: 2.3% of the U.S. office market, across 9,400 locations and 4,300 operators • Why London at 10% is the benchmark, and what that could mean for Manhattan • 88% growth for operators running two to six locations, against 8% for the top 100 by size • Where flex ranks when an enterprise tenant picks a building, and how to use that with a landlord • What a fast-growing enterprise tenant is buying from an operator None of these numbers are mine. They come from JLL and Yardi, and I am grateful to both companies for tracking this industry.