The traditional office lease, five or ten years, fixed rent, passive landlord, made sense when vacancy in major metros hovered in the single digits. In Los Angeles today, roughly 40% of office space sits empty, according to Jerome Chang, founder and licensed architect of BLANKSPACES, one of America’s longest-running coworking brands. That vacancy rate means many landlords collect no rent at all on large portions of their buildings, a position that no longer responds to conventional leasing strategies. What is replacing it, in at least some cases, is a deal structure that distributes risk between landlord and operator rather than concentrating it on one side.

Fax makers didn't lose to one competitor. They lost to an ecosystem that collectively made the fax irrelevant. That's the same dynamic playing out with traditional office leases right now. The replacement isn't coworking — it's a spectrum of options that renders the 7-year NNN lease as the thing you maybe still offer, but definitely not the thing you lead with.

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