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ULI Philippines Webinar: Property and Pandemics
ULI Philippines hosted a webinar on Property and Pandemics to tackle best practices of real estate in responding to the global pandemic.
29 April 2020
The crisis of COVID-19 has forced most industries to re-evaluate and modify work shifts and adopt work from home arrangements to continue their operations. In the Philippines, most commercial spaces and offices are forced to shutdown temporarily. Remote work has become a part of the precautions followed by many companies in order to continue their operations. Given the current uncertainty, what are the trends and opportunities that await flexible work arrangements?
On 23 April 2020, three of our ULI Philippines members, Mario Berta, Founder and CEO of FlySpaces, Michael McCullough, Managing Director of KMC Savills Inc. and Rowena Natividad, Head of Partnership Growth of International Workplace Group (IWG), convened to discuss about the coworking landscape – the demand prior to the pandemic and how it is being shaped by the current situation in a webinar.
Prior to COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for coworking space was increasing. According to Rowena Natividad, research shows that flexible working is on the rise even prior to the new normal. Organizations were considering to decentralize their work force to reduce commute and help their employees to work closer from home. However because of the uncertainty of today’s situation, Michael McCullough foresees that demand is going to become a cautious demand given that the new normal is unknown for the moment.
In a report published by FlySpaces this April 2020, a number of tenants approached them seeking advice on how to shift their requirements from conventional office space towards flexible office space. The demand is seen from tenants that have not previously considered flexible solutions and are now exploring this opportunity for their non-core departments, BCP (business continuity planning) and work from home solutions. According to the report, the trend among developers across Asia opening their own flexible solution brand will quickly accelerate as a result of the crisis. This opportunity is predicted to bring additional capacity to the market but at a much competitive price which will greatly impact small operators.
McCullough also shared that being pro-active as well as transparency and honesty across all parts of the ecosystem helped KMC to effectively approach the COVID-19 pandemic. He also mentioned some important lessons brought by this crisis:
Despite the unpredictability of the new normal, the panelist all agreed and are optimistic about the opportunities in flexible work solution. Mario Berta shared his thoughts on how he sees the future of flexible office spaces in which he mentioned three main trends in the market:
Natividad added that as there may be a possibility that employees might resort to just work from their home, not all have the capability to do so, given the limited resources such as stable internet connection that coworking spaces can provide. Also, most organizations still want the professional setup for their employees.
Definitely, the real estate industry will be facing a lot of changes along with other industries, as the world moves forward to the new normal. And like what Berta said, “The biggest issue now is uncertainty, the world will never go back to 1.5 billion tourist traveling across the world overnight. There will still be a lot of fear. But during bad times, developers, brokers, tenants they are more on the look out for the next best solution.”
For now, the key is to keep connected and support each other as we are learning everyday in this very unique challenges were now in.
The full recording of the webinar is available in Knowledge Finder.
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