The new crop of online marketplaces that display spare home space operate under the same general model as Airbnb.

The number of co-working facilities worldwide doubled year-on-year to about 6,000 in 2015, according to a recent study from Emergent Research, but an increasing number of people have also begun using the peer-to-peer model to find a more ideal work setting to meet their specific needs. “So as the number of public spaces that facilitate working for free-er have gone down, that’s pushed people into taking up memberships in co-working spaces or looking for alternative solutions.” “The notion that you can go and park yourself at your local Starbucks for the day is changing,” Glickman explained. The concept of renting out spare space in one’s home as office space took root in several major cities in early 2015 due to a combination of factors, including skyrocking rents, a growing gig-based economy, and an increasing familiarity with so-called “sharing economy” platforms like Airbnb and Uber.Īnother more subtle reason, according to Ed Glickman, professor of real-estate finance at Drexel University in Philadelphia, is that coffee shops in big cities started removing chairs to drive up turnover. As more workers eschew traditional offices, a new crop of start-ups has risen to the challenge of finding them unique settings from which to conduct business. In the US, for example, the number of employees who work remotely grew 6.5% between 20, while the employee population as a whole grew just 1.8%, according to. “Meanwhile the nature of employment is fragmenting … You don’t need stock paper or filing cabinets anymore you can just pick up your laptop and move around knowing that all of your documents are in the cloud.” “The idea of generating income out of something you’ve already got has become very desirable since Airbnb came around,” explained Vrumi co-founder Roddy Campbell.

Airbnb for workspaces