From Commodity to Community: 3 Lessons That Help Offices Capture Premium Rents in a Hybrid World
Welcome to a new issue of the Unlocking Real Estate Value newsletter. Each week I will provide you with exclusive advice and professional insights to help you realise long-term value through real estate development.
Hybrid work has broken the link between productivity and place. Office attendance now stabilises at three to four days per week at best and most companies expect 60% of staff to remain hybrid. At the same time a “flight to quality” is hollowing out commodity stock: since 2020, lower-grade buildings surrendered 400 million ft² of tenants while top-tier space gained 150 million ft². In this thinner, but choosier, market, square metres alone no longer win leases. Landlords must deliver an experience that answers the one question every employee now asks before commuting: What can I get in the office that I cannot get at home?
In this Newsletter I will draw from 3 proven playbooks that show how to turn real-estate hardware into a high-touch service platform:
Hospitality.
Senior Living.
Healthcare.
Let’s dive in.
1. Create the Third Place
Boutique hospitality treats the lobby as a living room rather than a corridor. Ace Hotel fills its ground floors with freelancers by day and DJs by night, monetising food-and-beverage while amping brand buzz.
Office owners who copy this logic see similar dividends. At MIND (Milan Innovation District) the lobby spaces are part of community life, doubling down as event and meeting spaces; tenant employees linger well past meetings because something is always happening.
The formula is simple:
Swap reception desks for coffee counters, power outlets and loose furniture.
Curate weekly pop-ups: book launches, maker markets, lunchtime concerts.
Invite the public where zoning allows; outside energy feeds inside reputation.
Action Framework 1 – Sense → Design → Program → Measure
Sense foot-traffic patterns for 30 days.
Design low-capex interventions to extend dwell time.
Program at least one recurring community event.
Measure post-fit-out café revenue and lobby occupancy; iterate quickly.
The capital is modest; the return is a lobby that becomes a marketing engine and a rent lever.
2. Design for Well-Being
Modern senior-living operators command €6 000+ per month (Audley Villages in the UK) by packaging homes with holistic wellness: sunrise yoga, chef-led nutrition, lifelong-learning workshops. Residents pay for quality of life, not square footage. Post-pandemic knowledge workers are signalling the same priorities.
Translated to offices
Wellness Pillar Office Tactics Physical Day-lit staircases, rooftop gardens, high-spec gyms, bike storage Mental Quiet rooms, meditation pods, biophilic design, art therapy pop-ups Social Communal kitchens, volunteer-day programmes, after-hours clubs
Staffing matters too. Senior-living communities employ an Engage-Life Director tasked with curating activities residents love. An office equivalent (a Tenant-Experience Manager) tracks participation metrics and adjusts the calendar in real time.
Financial case
Healthier, happier people stay longer. Fewer sick days raise tenant productivity; stronger community lifts retention. Even a €5 / m² rent premium across a 20 000 m² tower amortises a €5 million wellness retrofit in roughly six years (Indoor and outdoor health factors in the pricing of commercial real estate: A hedonic analysis of U.S. office buildings).
We find that healthy building effective rents transact between 4.4 and 7.7% more per square foot than their nearby non-certified and non-registered peers. - MIT Centre for Real Estate
3. Let Data Drive Delight
Healthcare reinventor One Medical erased waiting-room frustration with a single app that books visits, hosts virtual consults and pushes results. The insight: integration beats novelty.
Build a two-layer tech stack
Tenant-Experience App – one tap to enter turnstiles, reserve desks, order coffee, RSVP to rooftop yoga or report a facilities issue.
Smart-Building Analytics – IoT sensors capture occupancy, air quality and energy loads, allowing the BMS to fine-tune HVAC, lighting and cleaning in real time.
At The Edge (Deloitte’s Amsterdam HQ), over 30 000 IoT sensors feed a live dashboard showing under-utilised boardrooms on Friday afternoons. Rooms that in mid-2023 were refitted into quiet-focus pods and phone booths to match employee feedback via the building’s mobile app .
The same data arms owners in lease talks: “Here is your team’s utilisation heat-map by floor, room type and time slot, and your people’s top-rated events,” illustrating how our smart-building platform drives both efficiency and engagement.
Counterpoint: Avoid the Amenity Arms Race
C-suite critics warn that lavish perks erode NOI. They are half-right: unmeasured amenities become sunk costs.
The solution is discipline:
Pilot first – Ace Hotel tested pop-up vendors before permanent F&B deals.
Survey often – Atria Senior Living drops activities with low participation.
Retire ruthlessly – kill any feature that fails to move a KPI (rent, lease term, satisfaction).
Experience is an asset only when it is curated and accountable.
Implementation Playbook
Step Key Question KPI Target 1 Which “jobs to be done” (culture, collaboration, learning, brand) matter most to anchor tenants? Tenant-survey response > 60 % 2 Which amenities directly serve those jobs? Every amenity mapped to one job 3 How will we staff and fund the service layer? Community manager hired; programming budget ≤ 1 % of gross rent 4 What tech will capture usage and feedback? App adoption ≥ 75 % of employees in 90 days 5 When do we re-evaluate ROI? Quarterly; aim for rent premium ≥ 5 % YoY versus local benchmark
Conclusion: Experience Is the New Anchor Tenant
Hybrid work turned the office from daily obligation into occasional destination. Landlords who adopt the space + service + technology stack clear the new market hurdle:
Is this building worth the commute?
Hospitality shows how to lure people in.
Senior living proves that well-being retains them.
Healthcare demonstrates that frictionless tech keeps them delighted.
Execute with data-driven discipline, scale what tenants love and sunset what they ignore. The payoff is tangible: deeper engagement, longer leases and premium rents. Competing on square-metre price alone is a race to the bottom; competing on curated experience rewrites the revenue curve.
In the post-pandemic era, experience isn’t an amenity; it is the product.
That’s all for this week.
— Carlo
Founder and Managing Director Benigni
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This post is sponsored by Benigni a specialist development manager working with international investors to realise long-term value through optimised development strategies. To learn more click this link to our website.
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Yes! And the next step: help tenants coordinate their in-office days. A building that's 40% full every day beats one that's packed twice a week and empty the rest.