Brooklyn Stands Out as Coworking Grows Nationwide

The U.S. coworking sector grew further in 2025, with some notable markets emerging as hotspots among the top 50 U.S. markets, the latest CoworkingCafe data shows. As utilization patterns evolved unevenly across the country and hybrid work solidified itself as the standard, companies continued to turn to flexible, cost-effective alternatives to long-term leases, strengthening coworking’s role within the office sector.

As of February, flex office operators had 162.3 million square feet nationwide across 9,041 locations. Shared space accounted for 2.3 percent of the total leasable office inventory, helping bridge the gap between fully remote work and traditional office use. Elevated vacancies across the sector further supported this shift, allowing coworking to close the gap between return-to-office expectations and landlords adjusting strategies. The sector is expected to expand further into 2026, as hybrid work is not just a temporary solution.

A coworking market stood out in early 2026 as the leading metro by share. Brooklyn, N.Y.‘s flex share accounted for 4.4 percent of its office stock—well above the 2.3 percent national figure and topping the charts at the end of February, CoworkingCafe data shows.

The good performance of this specific key metric in Brooklyn carries the metro’s growth spurt from last year. As of February, the metro had a 7 percent jump in flex office location count, from the 84 locations registered at the end of 2025’s first quarter to 90 coworking spaces.

In terms of square footage, Brooklyn’s 90 locations totaled short of 2 million square feet, placing the borough on the second-highest spot among similar markets.

By locations count, Charlotte, N.C., stood out as the metro with the highest figure among Brooklyn’s peers, with 118 coworking spaces. In terms of flex space as a percentage of total leasable office space, Brooklyn’s 4.4 percent placed it at the top of this list of secondary markets. Metros that follow include Las Vegas (3.6 percent) and Indianapolis (3.5 percent), while Charlotte and Orlando, Fla., had 2.2 percent each, below the national average figure.

Flex space concentrates in core Brooklyn submarkets

Brooklyn emerged as a growing alternative business hub for Manhattan, supported by lower operating costs for startups and flexible office users, according to a blog post by Mindspace. While Manhattan is the primary business hub of New York City, Brooklyn offers many other advantages, such as a strong tech ecosystem, proximity to venture capital and access to capital. Paired with more affordable coworking options, this borough has risen in popularity in recent years.

Five submarkets host the majority of coworking stock in Brooklyn. These five total 1.4 million square feet of shared space combined as of February.

The top submarket by square footage is Williamsburg-Greenpoint, where there are 33 locations totaling 701,954 square feet. Dumbo-Vinegar Hill follows with nine locations totaling 276,400 square feet, while the Navy Yard-Fort Greene-Clinton Hill submarket has 171,964 square feet across four locations.

Williamsburg-Greenpoint’s flex space share stood at 15.4 percent, the highest figure. The next submarket is Boerum Hill-Cobble Hill, where its flex office stock accounted for 14.6 percent of its total office square footage. More specifically, this submarket has only two locations totaling 26,064 square feet.

The third-highest figure was the 13 percent recorded in Crown Heights-Central Brooklyn, while other submarkets that followed include Dumbo-Vinegar Hill (9.5 percent), Red Hook-Carroll Gardens–Gowanus (4.7 percent) and Brooklyn Heights (3.8 percent), among the borough’s 13 submarkets.

The lowest figure was the 0.4 percent recorded in Coney Island – Brighton Beach. Here, there is only one shared space location totaling 4,000 square feet.

Demand for flex space persists

In Brooklyn, Mindspace expanded its footprint by 11,500 square feet. The company signed an expansion agreement at 25 Kent, an eight-story office building in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg submarket. Now, Mindspace is leasing a total of 50,000 square feet at the property. The flex office provider first signed a leasing agreement at the property in 2022, marking its first coworking space in New York City.

In late 2025, Jay Suites opened its first Brooklyn flex office location by signing a leasing agreement of 30,000 square feet in the Fort Greene neighborhood of the borough, according to The Real Deal. The company will take space on the second floor of the Pioneer Building at 41 Flatbush Ave., a space previously occupied by Regus.