Why is the crisis the best time for new formats? – Alexandr Sharapov
Coronavirus will be an accelerator of many trends. The formats of real estate, which investors used to look at with fear, such as coliving and co-covorking, will become extremely popular. President of Becar Asset Management Alexander Sharapov will talk about it.
The current crisis fundamentally differs from others that our country has experienced in the past 30 years. First of all, it will result in the acceleration of real estate trends that have been gaining strenght over the past few years. Formats that meet three basic principles (flexibility, economy and digitization) will come to the fore.
Contrary to the view that after quarantine mankind will move massively to remote job, I am sure the opposite. In April we conducted a survey among more than one thousand respondents. About 83% of them believe that it is more efficient to work in the office, and only 15% believe that it is more comfortable for them to work from home.
After the quarantine, we will all have to try again to find the so-called work-life balance. Traditional offices will really continue to lose their popularity, as they did before quarantine. At the same time, many employers, making sure that part of their employees can work remotely and wishing to save on rent, will introduce a freer schedule of visits to the office. So, they won't renounce it, but make it even more flexible. The era of co-covorking, where there are places for team "brainstorms" as well as "quiet" rooms, relaxation areas, gardens, libraries, some and game spaces, will come instead of offices.
COVID-19 won’t destroy a humanity's eagerness for communication. So, even colivings will become more relevant, where the average area of residential and public spaces per person is about 19 sq. m. In the future, the living space will be further reduced to 12-13 square meters. As Rezo Merhan, the founder of The Collective Old Oak, developing the network of coliving, rightly noted, this format makes it possible to stop continuing using the methods of renting, adopted in the XIX century, in the Internet age. If you rent an apartment, you still often get a place without furniture and home appliances. But even after the spent months on the purchase of all necessary things you need to do the old-fashioned organization of your own pastime. Living in coliving a person does not need to think not only about the trival things, but also about how to organize their leisure time. That is, the fee also includes the opportunity to make new friends.
Aparthotels and lifestyle hotels will come to the fore in hotel real estate. A success of aparthotels will be associated with greater investor protection through long-term lease agreements. Lifestyle hotels have been gaining popularity recently and will recover more quickly from the pandemic due to young travellers, who will be the first to seek new impressions after the opening of borders. Their main features are small rooms around 12 square meters. m. (modern travelers travel light) and essential spaces for communication and interaction. The bar in such hotels became the center of life. All largest companies noted this trend, but the first one was CitizenM, a successful networking project with emphasis is on digitization, which enable to minimize guest communication with staff.
In turn, shopping malls will become a post-modern place with a wide variety of opportunities for positive emotions. The same applies to the sale points themselves. Like Apple, whose stores have primarily an image component, people will visit the stores of the future not for shopping but for impressions. A striking example is the recently opened amusement park "Dream Island" in Moscow, which became a symbiosis of trade and entertainment components.
In doing so, all types of real estate will be characterized by a condom format, involving many owners with a single management company. The financial crisis and the lack of "long" money in Russia will lead to this.