Coworking spaces that lease a shared desk or a semiprivate office by the month have been a go-to workplace option for many business startups, from gig workers to freelancers to those with more ambitious growth plans.
But those one- or two-person startups don’t need to graduate to more formal office space as they grow, and the savings can be significant.
In D.C., CoworkingCafe said the difference between a traditional, long-term office lease and staying with a coworking space model can save as much as 53.5%. That’s the 10th largest discount between a traditional office and coworking space among major metro areas.
CoworkingCafe said choosing to grow in a coworking space in D.C. can lead to an average annual savings of almost $56,000 for a 10-person team.
In D.C., the median price of an open workplace at a coworking location is $299 a month, and the median price of a dedicated desk is $430 a month. For the entire D.C. metro, median prices are even lower, at $200 and $364 a month respectively.
At the end of the second quarter of 2024, there were 258 coworking spaces in the D.C. market totaling 6.18 million square feet, ranked behind only Los Angeles, Dallas and Manhattan. On a metro level basis, Arlington and Alexandria rank in the top five for the number of coworking spaces in suburbs.
After payroll, office leasing can be one of a startup company’s biggest expenses. CoworkingCafe said coworking membership fees include things, such as cleaning and furniture. Purchasing desks and chairs for 10 employees alone would be a one-time expense of about $6,000. Cleaning averages $12,000 a year for a 2,000-square-foot office space.
The biggest traditional office lease versus coworking space discount is in Sunnyvale, California, at an average of 70.3%. All Silicon Valley cities in the coworking report have coworking subscriptions that are less than half the cost of an office lease, even with some of the highest coworking dedicated desk prices in the country.
CoworkingCafe’s full analysis of coworking versus traditional office space is online.
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