D.C. Coworking Market 'Turning The Corner' After Slow Covid Recovery

When Industrious opened a full-floor coworking space on the top level of the Homer Building in 2023, the timing wasn’t exactly optimal.

D.C. was just peeking its head out from the pandemic years, a period in which office usage plummeted and downtown resembled a ghost town.

Occupancy at the location above Metro Center grew slowly at first, but three years later, the 41K SF space is now full.

“Homer took a lot longer because of Covid, but now that we're coming out of that, now that the market is vibrant, [it] has been a beneficiary of that,” Industrious Vice President and Head of Real Estate Growth Peri Demestihas said.

The D.C. coworking market recovered from the pandemic slower than major cities such as New York and Miami, industry leaders told Bisnow, but it is now showing positive signs. Demand for coworking space is finally taking off, catching up with the supply in the market and causing operators to start looking at expanding again. 

“Over the last two years, we've seen material tick up across the DMV,” Demestihas said. “But really, this year towards the end of last year, the CBD itself, core D.C. itself [saw] material increases, which is great.”

The city was an early adopter of coworking. Operators quickly gobbled up space between 2015 and 2019, becoming one of the top drivers of D.C.’s office demand and making it one of the largest coworking markets in the country. The nation’s capital now ranks No. 4 for its number of coworking locations behind Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Its size made it especially susceptible to the pandemic in 2020, which hollowed out coworking spaces and had an outsized impact on the D.C. region. And then WeWork’s bankruptcy at the end of 2023 dealt another blow to the market. 

But the market dynamics have changed. 

WeWork emerged from bankruptcy in June 2024, and its portfolio has remained stable after a period of contraction. A WeWork spokesperson told Bisnow its tour volume in March was up by nearly 16% from last year across the region and over 18% in its District locations. 

And an increase in footfall year-over-year is strong indication of the market “turning the corner,” WeWork Vice President of Leasing Nick DeMarinis said.

“So, we're seeing this gradual market improvement right now,” he said. 

Industrious has experienced a noticeable acceleration in demand in its downtown D.C. locations over the past six months, Demestihas said. 

“There's still got to be some kind of slack in the line that needs to work its way out of the system, right? Like, you haven't had years upon years of hot demand,” he said. 

“But it is starting to see the demand that we have seen from other markets for years. So that's promising.”

While between spring 2024 and 2025, the D.C. area gained just 100K SF of coworking space, it gained 900K SF between spring 2025 and 2026, according to Yardi Kube data provided to Bisnow. 

The region now has 7.4M SF of coworking space, a 14% increase in square footage year-over-year, according to a Yardi Kube report released in March.

The growth puts D.C. toward the middle of the pack for coworking growth — and well below the fastest-growing markets like Jacksonville, which saw a 43% growth, and Richmond-Tidewater and the Southwest Florida Coast, which grew by 31% and 30%, respectively. 

D.C.’s peer markets of Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth grew their square footage by 16%, 27% and 29%, respectively. Boston and Atlanta, the country’s seventh- and eighth-largest coworking markets, both recorded 22% year-over-year growth. 

“So, even though it's still experiencing growth, it's not at the same pace as other markets,” Yardi Kube content marketing writer Sanziana Bona said of D.C. 

“Clearly, there is demand. I feel like as long as locations and square footage are both going up, that's a direct indicator of increase in demand for coworking spaces,” she added.

The market gained 10 new entrants last year, taking it from 99 to 109 unique operators, Yardi Kube data shows.

The Malin, a coworking operator based in New York City, announced in May it was preparing to open a 20,400 SF space across two floors at 1156 15th St. NW, its 10th location nationwide. 

Other coworking operators that entered the D.C. market last year include Innovation Hub, Success Space and The Hive, according to Yardi Kube. Three others, Social, Olida and Three Whistles, had one location before January 2025 and have since opened additional spaces.

Last quarter, Convene Hospitality Group expanded its space at an office building near the White House where it had been fully occupied and fielding a waitlist for two years. 

The company leased a third floor at 600 14th St. NW, bringing its footprint to 80K SF at the 317K SF office building. 

The additional 27K SF, set to open in mid-May, was originally part of Convene’s lease at the building when it opened in 2020, but the operator had given it back to the landlord during the height of the pandemic in 2021. 

But last year, when a government contractor downsized amid the Trump administration's federal cuts, the coworking operator snapped up the opportunity.

“It was a no-brainer, as we were fully occupied and needing more space,” Transwestern Vice President Collin Brown, who represented Convene in the deal and whose team leases its coworking space, told Bisnow.

By the time the new Convene floor opens, it should already have multiple spaces leased to tenants, Brown said. He said the team is optimistic the space will be substantially occupied by the end of the summer.

Convene’s D.C. footprint is relatively small. Hamilton Square is just one of two locations the operator has in the D.C. area. The other, at CoStar’s Rosslyn headquarters, is 34K SF of conference and event space.

But traditional coworking operators with much larger footprints are also growing. 

Industrious locations in the D.C. area are now 82% occupied, up from 70% this time last year, and exceeding its 2019 occupancy of 80% in the region, a spokesperson told Bisnow. 

The coworking company has 15 locations in the region totaling nearly half a million square feet.

This spring, Industrious is opening one new downtown D.C. location and expanding at one of its original locations in the city. 

The company last month debuted a new 29K SF footprint at Metropolitan Square for its Indy concept, a smaller-format, less-amenitized model. The space is a portion of what was once a massive WeWork location that closed in 2022. 

Last month, it expanded its footprint at One Thomas Circle, taking another 21K SF at the property where it planted a flag in 2018. The expansion is bringing 210 more office seats to the location.

And Industrious has more to announce. Demestihas said it’s on the “one-yard line” for a deal in a D.C.-area submarket that it hasn’t yet penetrated. 

WeWork has spent the past few years in consolidation mode rather than expansion mode. It emerged from bankruptcy in summer 2024 with 250 fewer locations than it had at its 2019 peak. 

Last summer, the company inked its first new lease since 2019 in New York. 

DeMarinis told Bisnow WeWork is looking at additional space nationally where there is “continued tenant and member demand” that’s “proven over a period of time.”

Does the D.C. market have the expansion criteria that WeWork is looking for now? 

“They’re heading that way,” DeMarinis said.