COIMA published the second report on the future of offices

Dear Tenants, Investors, Partners and Friends,

We are pleased to share with you the key findings of a survey that COIMA has performed between October and January 2021 with a pool of corporates having an office footprint in Italy, and in particular, Milan.

The survey has allowed us to gather direct feedback from tenants on the likely medium-term outlook for the office product taking into consideration the disruption brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The publication of the key findings from this corporate survey follows the release of our initial “The Future of Offices” report published in October 2020. In that first report, we had put forward several initial and preliminary considerations on the likely impact of an accelerated adoption of remote working on office space demand (both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view).

The feedback gathered from the corporates surveyed confirms some of our initial considerations, in particular the fact that corporates are likely to increase the possibility for employees to work remotely, however, such increase would not structurally undermine the need to have an office footprint. Furthermore, the likely reduction in office space requirements associated to the increased adoption of remote working by corporates appears relatively marginal, albeit not negligible, and therefore not something that would create a structural impairment of the office sector going forward.

The primary takeaway gathered from the corporate survey is instead a positive one: the relevance of offices and their use will change in the medium-term from places of “production” to places of “interaction”. Therefore, the features of offices (from the point of view of their location as well as in terms of their technical and architectural characteristics) would need to evolve in order to maximise employee engagement, productivity and stimulate their creative potential.

Finally, the corporate survey performed reinforces our belief that corporates, investors, developers and architects will need to work more and more together with an increased focus on the relationship between space and experience in order to create value both from a financial and from a social point of view.