The potential demise of coworking giant WeWork has been well-documented — but who owns its London outposts, where are they and how much is WeWork paying for them?
Using data from CoStar, Bisnow has created an interactive map of all 49 of WeWork’s London locations. The map details which entities own the buildings WeWork occupies, how much space it has taken, how much rent it is paying and which markets are particularly exposed to any form of insolvency.
WeWork warned last month of uncertainty about its ability to continue as a going concern, taking losses even after breaking leases on unprofitable locations. The rent bill it racked up during its period of hypergrowth is not covered by the income it takes in. And though some of WeWork's lenders have swapped debt for equity, it still carries a significant amount of debt.
CoStar’s data highlights the scale of WeWork’s entrenchment in London. During its period of expansion ahead of a failed 2019 initial public offering, WeWork signed to occupy more than 4M SF in the capital; in just four years, it became the UK’s largest private sector office occupier.
Today it occupies 3.2M SF, meaning it has exited more than 800K SF of leases.
It is not certain what would happen to WeWork and its leases in the event of the company filing for insolvency. The vast majority of its locations are leased to special-purpose vehicles, with no recourse to the parent company. In other words, if the company was bought out of bankruptcy, any new owner could potentially hand the keys back to landlords of unprofitable spaces, leaving building owners with large chunks of space to fill.
There is also the chance that no buyer would be found, and all of the company’s space would revert to landlords. WeWork owes £3B collectively across its London leases.
No single landlord has exposure to more than two buildings with WeWork as an occupier, CoStar data showed, indicating that the effect of a collapse would be spread among multiple owners. But some owners have large exposures in single buildings, like Almacantar at Southbank Place, where WeWork occupies 96%.
As a city, London could absorb the collapse of WeWork, CoStar data showed: It occupies 0.8% of London office space, and even if it vacated all its current leases, London’s vacancy rate would only rise slightly, from 8.7% to 9.5%.
But the impact of a bankruptcy would not be evenly spread. WeWork occupies 8% of all office space in the Paddington submarket and 4.2% in Southbank West.
“Paddington and Southbank West have been success stories in recent years and are among the tightest submarkets in central London. In Paddington, which has strongly outperformed from a demand perspective over the past year, the office vacancy rate is just 3%. In Southbank West, it stands at 4.2%,” CoStar Senior Director of UK Analytics Mark Stansfield wrote in a note on WeWork’s London footprint.
“But should the circa 300K SF of WeWork space in each area be released on to the open market, their vacancy rates would jump to around 11% and 8%, respectively.”
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