Unchaining the German Flex Market In 2025 – Joachim Gripp (Design Offices)

This 2025 Coworking Europe conference deck presented Joachim Gripp’s assessment of Germany’s office and flexible-workspace markets on behalf of Design Offices. It described a depressed conventional office market in which leasing activity had fallen by 35% and vacant space in selected cities had risen to between three and five times its 2020 level. The slides contrasted stronger prime rents with largely flat average rents, framing this divergence as evidence of market segmentation and a flight to quality. Gripp identified location, modern facilities and the ability to attract teams as increasingly important characteristics of successful offices, while citing an expectation that Germany’s overall office stock could shrink by 20% by 2030 compared with 2019. The deck also listed five constraints on flexible workspace: macroeconomic recession, unstable workplace strategies, excess sublease supply, inflation-linked rent increases and overcapacity within the flex sector. Its concluding recommendations called for operators to improve their offer, preserve their medium-term value proposition instead of relying heavily on discounts, reduce portfolios that were too large or underperforming, and explain the value of flexible workspace more clearly to the market.

Key findings

• Office leasing activity in the selected German centres was shown as 35% lower in 2025.
• Vacant office space had risen 3.1 times in Munich and 4.5 times in Berlin between Q1–Q3 2020 and Q1–Q3 2025.
• The prime rent index had increased by 35% while the average rent index remained broadly flat between 2021 and Q3 2025.
• The deck cited a projection that overall office space could shrink by 20% by 2030 compared with 2019.

Presented by Joachim Gripp, Design Offices, at Coworking Europe 2025