Shared workspace business flourishes in downtown HCMC

New co-working spaces were created mainly in five locations  - three clusters in District 1, the city’s business district, and two in Binh Thanh District, a short distance from District 1, according to real estate firm CBRE’s latest report.

Co-working space has been expanding at a rapid pace, and its occupancy rate averaged 80 percent in the second quarter, the CBRE report said.

By the end of June, there were 46,266 square meters of shared offices in HCMC, up 101 percent over the same period last year. This figure is projected to increase two-fold by the end of 2019.

Nguyen Hong Hai, CEO of office rental service Pax Sky, said co-working spaces are now popular because the supply of office space in HCMC’s central districts fails to meet demand of the rising number of entrepreneurs choosing to base themselves in the city.

According to the Global Research on Flexible Workspace report, the HCMC market is among the top five developing markets with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 80 percent per year. 

A CBRE report last year showed that around 54 percent of co-working space users in Ho Chi Minh City were either founders or employees of start-ups, and approximately 14 percent were self-employed freelancers.