Phone booth at Mastercard NYC Tech Hub
Crystal Cox
Luxury residential developments are wooing tenants with co-working spaces, per The New York Times.
Office suites, podcast booths, and cubicles are being offered so residents can work from home.
One executive told The New York Times that providing such amenities is like having a pool.
Luxury rental developers are attracting prospective tenants to their new builds by offering amenities including co-working spaces, private office suites, cameras, podcasts and phone booths, a New York Times report says.
Camden Harbor View, a residential development in Long Beach, California, has a common workspace for tenants in the building. Ric Campo, the chief executive of the developer Camden Property Trust, told the New York Times that it’s “like a pool” and “something you have to do today.”
Developers embraced the innovative offering of turning residential spaces into areas for tenants to work from home during the pandemic. One Miami Beach development started offering private office suites to its residents in 2020 as Covid-19 restrictions drove the trend in working from home.
A McKinsey survey on remote working in June found that 35% of respondents have the option to work from home five days a week, which could make such residential co-working spaces highly sought after amenities.
Fifty-eight percent of the participants had the option to work from home at least one day a week, the report found, and 87% take the opportunity to work flexibly when given the option.
One real estate firm, DivcoWest, is opening an apartment complex with five work-from-home areas along with conference rooms this fall, per the report. DivcoWest executive John Weigel told the news outlet that it’s a “significant” part of its amenity package and that it is “incentivized” for prospective tenants.
Developer Macklowe Properties is trying to tempt renters with cameras, microphones and podcast booths in its co-working space, called One Works by One Wall Street, the report says.
Another developer catching on to the trend is the Brodsky Organization, which opted to add cubicles to work from as well as phone booths to a co-working space this summer, instead of an open lounge it had planned.