CRE Costs Force Trade-off Between Flexibility, Privacy

164 Townsend is one of the nine additional spaces Breather has added recently.

SAN FRANCISCO—Since the close of an $85 million Series C funding round in 2018 and the appointment of Bryan Murphy as CEO in January, flexible workspace provider Breather has focused its offerings to address the trend toward longer-term hybrid real estate solutions that provide the flexibility of co-working with the privacy of traditional leases. And, in the first half of 2019, Breather added 11 new spaces in San Francisco and Los Angeles totaling 30,245 square feet, bringing its West Coast portfolio to more than 110 spaces. Breather operates a global network of more than 500 private on-demand meeting spaces and offices in 10 cities.

“The rising cost of commercial real estate in San Francisco and Los Angeles is forcing businesses to make a trade-off between flexibility and privacy. As epicenters of the country’s tech and entertainment industries, the high value placed on original ideas and intellectual property makes this trade-off an especially difficult one,” said Jenny Hahn, breather’s director of real estate. “As we grow our portfolio of flexible private spaces for long- and short-term use, we’re helping eliminate this risk and unlock business growth.”