Even with the strong contraction shown in the corporate office market in Mexico, developers in the capital are looking for new business models to deal with the 2.4 million square meter vacancy, at the same time that they have continued to incorporate new constructions, although in smaller quantities to that observed prior to the pandemic.

According to the Solili platform, at the end of the first quarter of the year, the vacancy was mainly concentrated in three submarkets that group a little more than half of this indicator, the Norte submarket with 442 thousand square meters, Insurgentes with 388 thousand square meters and 384 thousand square meters in Santa Fe.

The behavior of the developers, after starting the activities in June 2020, was to give continuity to almost all the projects, including large volumes, focusing on the final output product and what investors or tenants would demand.

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Q3 2020 was the quarter that registered the highest activity with the delivery of 4 important projects due to their profitable net area: The Summit with 53 thousand square meters in the Santa Fe submarket, Corporativo Melt with 31.7 thousand square meters and Corporativo Vértice with 26 thousand meters square meters within the Polanco and Insurgentes submarket 700 in the Insurgentes submarket with 16.4 thousand square meters.

That same quarter, the planned projects in the capital that began construction totaled 42.2 thousand square meters of net profitable area, with a marked trend in the startup of boutique projects in submarkets such as Lomas Palmas.

In cases such as Monterrey, the commercialization of office spaces has decreased in rhythm but various developments that had been planned prior to the pandemic continue, in which the developers first began the construction and commercialization of the residential stage, medical use or hotel, in search for attractions for the demanding corporate space.

The solutions have been diverse in search of occupying or disposing of these inventories in the wake of the pandemic, from reconverting the end use to much more flexible marketing agreements at a discount. All this under the slogan of understanding what the consumer is looking for and adapting the offer based on those needs.

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Institutional coworking companies opened their options to multiple alliances, as in the case of Wework with study centers or expanding startups, which found benefits in terms of grace and flexible conditions.

Other business models emerged post-pandemic, such as Around, which offers unique workspaces for growing teams, as a way to unite the supply of companies that have empty spaces with the demand represented by companies that require spaces. By May of this year they had 173 options in Mexico City, from 1 to 20 positions, in the Roma-Condesa, Polanco, Insurgentes and Poniente colonies. It also offers 50 locations in Guadalajara and plans to expand to Monterrey, Puebla and Querétaro in 2022.

What remains undoubted is that the pandemic gave the final push to a work model that had remained for years, through technology that went on to detonate the reinvention of the office concept.