Hey Rob, That's cool that you can pass your awesome real estate deal onto your tenants. At Citizen Space, we do, too.
Our operating budget is close to $9k per month Rent: $5,000 Utils: 1,000 (internet, cleaning, utils) Staff: $2,400 Extras: $ 500 (coffee, food, events, etc.) Total: $8,900 We decided to focus on permanent residents rather than doing the 'gym' or 'library' model of selling lots of monthly memberships without having permanent space. It's worked really well for us from the beginning and created a nice, permanent sense of community. We have 20 desks that we price at $425/month. Even if we sell all the desks ($8,500), we fall short. Therefore, we offer another level of rental (limited though), Citizen Lite at $350/month and charge for events (depending on the time and size of the event) to make up for it. We would have to sell 200 memberships at your rate in order to cover our costs and, well, the overhead of time on keeping track of this alone would raise our costs. I think you will find that, across the board, the coworking spaces you are looking at and scratching your head at (that have been in operation on a non-profit level by and large for many years) are pricing their spaces right. I hope that you can appreciate that, in Edmonton, the cost of real estate is vastly different that that of San Francisco or New York City or Houston. We all DO expect people will come in every day and make it their permanent work spaces. That's what makes for community for our spaces and it keeps them running and thriving. It's more beautiful to me to have that sense of community than to undercut and slash costs. And it works. So, "Are *WE* getting something wrong?" No. I don't think so. We've been thinking about this stuff for years and making sure the pricing works in everyone's favour. I'm happy for you that you can price so inexpensively. Congrats. Tara On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 10:47 PM, robdavy <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Everyone, > > Quick question (kinda)... > > We're in the process of setting up a coworking space/hacker space here > in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (metro pop of 1m). We're well underway, > non-profit registered, directors elected, space found, 40+ members > joined, etc. > > We're obviously working on a non-profit model, shared space, 24/7 > access, etc. > > My concern is pricing. Lots of places seem to offer what we're going > to be offering for many hundreds of dollars a month. We're going to be > doing it for $50. $50/month gets you unlimited access to our 3700sq ft > space. No permanent desks, but permanent offices will be offered for > around $250/month. Our's is not exactly a co-working space in the > sense we do not expect people to work here 9-5 (some will of course, > but most members have full time jobs and want the collaborative use of > the space, plus access to the equipment (machining, etc). Check out > http://d.ents.ca/ for photos > > Why $50/month? Our rent is $5/sqft + $2.87 operating. 3700sq ft @ $8 = > $2500/month ($'s are per year). So based on the non-profit model found > here http://coworking.pbworks.com/PricingExamples we need $3750/month. > Well, our utils are included in the operating, internet is free from > someones business via a point to point wireless connection, etc, etc, > so we're figuring max $500/month in misc costs. The landlord is also > giving us 2 months free rent. > > So say $3000/month, that's only 60 members @ $50/month each. We have > 40 signed up now (of course some will drop out, but we've still got > many coming in) and we'll cover more costs with offices rented. > > Is it just the cheap rent that is making our space $50/month and not > $300/month (or more!). > Why do some (most) places need to charge so much? > > Thanks in advance > > > Rob Davy > Edmonton New Technology Society > www.ents.ca > > > > -- tara 'missrogue' hunt Book: The Whuffie Factor (http://www.thewhuffiefactor.com) Blog: HorsePigCow: Marketing Uncommon (http://horsepigcow.com) Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/missrogue phone: 415-694-1951 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
