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New tenants are taking over former WeWorks as the coworking company's bankruptcy proceedings accelerate a trend of move-outs that began in 2020 after its failed IPO in 2019.
Since 2016, WeWork has vacated 8.9M SF of office space across the country, according to an analysis by CoStar. Of that, about 3M has been re-leased, often to coworking competitors.
WeWork left behind a little more than 3M SF in 2023, and new tenants took over about 914K SF, according to CoStar data.
The coworking giant began renegotiating and rejecting leases around the time it declared bankruptcy in November, saying that reducing its lease obligations and costs was key to keeping the company afloat.
It has renegotiated more than 80 leases globally since the process began, a WeWork spokesperson told Bisnow. Competitors had previously told Bisnow that they were watching the lease rejections so they could scoop up available space.
Of the roughly 90 tenants that have signed leases for WeWork's former locations, 902K SF has been taken over by Industrious, Studio by Tishman Speyer and IWG, which operates the Regus and Spaces brands.
In nearly 90 cases, tenants leasing from WeWork stayed in the space when a new coworking operator took over, according to CoStar's findings. There are also cases of smaller coworking operators taking over locations, including in Miami.
Other tenants that have backfilled chunks of vacated WeWork space include Sony Pictures with 158K SF, cybersecurity firm Palantir with 140K SF and Boeing with 126K SF.
Still, nearly two-thirds of the space WeWork has vacated is empty. The coworking operator said in November that it could exit about 100 more leases on top of the 69 it initially set out to leave behind and that it was negotiating with about 400 landlords on new terms.
CORRECTION, MARCH 7, 2:54 P.M. PT: This story has been updated to clarify the timeframe in which WeWork vacated the leases, as well as update the number of leases renegotiated since the bankruptcy filing.
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