Flexible workspace model: the future of Real Estate companies?

Henrik Saxborn is the CEO of Castellum, the second biggest real estate company in Sweden. The Swedish company manages an assets portfolio of more than 600 properties, mainly in commercial real estate, representing a total value of more than nine billion euros. Castellum took over UnitedSpaces; is the flexible workspace model the future of Real Estate companies?

Main takeaways

The highlights from our conversation with Henrik Saxborn are summarised below:

• One year ago, Castellum took over UnitedSpaces, one of the most famous coworking operators in Sweden, which is active in five cities and operates a total of 6.600 sqm of coworking spaces.
• The integration between Castellum and UnitedSpaces is going well: “We leave autonomy to the operator as the know-how and the culture are very important assets, as well as the brand. We are already working on doubling the UnitedSpaces offering”, says Henrik Saxborn.
• For Henrik, it would be a risk for traditionally conservative property companies not to embrace the flexibility and hospitality based workspace model: “For our good sake, our occupiers have to be attractive to the new generation of employees. If they stay in the outdated model, they won’t be able to recruit as much and their activity might suffer. We have to provide solutions for that”, explains.
• Castellum chose to take over an existing coworking brand as they figured that building their own coworking service would have taken too much time and carried a higher level of risk.

Watch the full video conversation with Henrik Saxborn below.