It seems counterintuitive, but WFH, remote-first, and hybrid work may give a boost to brokers who leverage technology to adapt to change
In the early days of the pandemic, work-from-home (WFH) became the default due to strict constraints on in-person gatherings. That gave way to optional office time, virtual-first, fully or partially remote office spaces, flexible hours, wider geographical hiring searches, pop-up offices in different cities — a still-evolving set of practices collectively referred to as hybrid work.
Far from marking the end of office work, the pandemic has caused a sea change in how both employees and employers see the office.
It’s important for brokers to realize that their clients are changing how they interact with office space. As demand for the classic, one-size-fits-all, large-scale central office declines, the need for smaller, more flexible, and more distributed office space is rising.
VC firm Andreesen-Horowitz is taking a radical shot at future-proofing their physical offices. The group recently announced that they were reallocating their real estate resources to a new hybrid work office that can “physically assemble anywhere in the world very quickly.”
While scaling back their existing Menlo Park and San Francisco locations, the firm is opening three new offices bicoastally: one in Miami Beach, one in Santa Monica, and one in New York. They are effectively moving their HQ to the cloud, and their approach moving forward is to “create physical offices globally where needed to support our teams and partners.”
Could a flexible network of offices across multiple geographical hubs become more common for companies that are able to do most of their work collaboratively online? If so, what are the implications for how brokers should be working today?
For brokers, this sea change could mean that rather than helping a client search for a new HQ, which is one property with a clearly defined set of search requirements, the same client may now require searches across multiple markets, with different sets of requirements. Their needs may require more frequent searches across different cities, and the pivot to smaller, networked offices may mean a longer-term relationship than the traditional one-office lease creates.
Work is happening in the cloud using digital tools and services that make communication and collaboration easier and more effective than email and conference calls. This is the new expectation of how work gets done.
Because of this, brokers who use software to better address the needs of their clients will have an advantage in the hybrid work future. Using a CRE deal platform like LeaseUp makes it easy to deliver on the needs of the client, no matter how complex. To thrive in the new normal, brokers need tools to manage multiple searches within a single project, collaborate with other brokers and clients on one space, and quickly update searches as needs change.
LeaseUp is passionate about giving you the tools you need to meet the needs of your clients. Schedule a demo to hear more about how we are transforming the broker/client relationship.
