Renting from a coworking space (We've never used WeWork but have multiple others) is generally month-to-month with a one-page contract and I can pay with a credit card.

Getting an office lease is a huge process with a stack of contracts, pushy agents, ridiculously long leases, misleading prices, hidden costs, furnishing, and establishing all the necessary services. And if you're a small company, the owners are expected to personally financially guarantee the lease.

they provide a lot of "value add" through economies of scale (happy hours, pizza parties, mini conferences, stocked kitchen, random little "perks", etc) which are factored into the cost, but require no talent or time overhead for the client companies.

Think of it as "sexy startup office as a service."

Not saying it's a worthy or necessary service this world needs, but I think that's the value they provide and what companies pay for.

They may be but corporate landlords want fairly long term leases. I recently tried to find an office for myself and had trouble finding 'official' office buildings that would do less than a 3 or 4 year lease. If I had a WeWork locally I believe I could do much shorter leases for a small office space.

In my experience, commercial agents are looking to close big 10+ year leases, not chase down sub-leases from firms with a little extra space for 6-8 guys.

There's a flexibility in duration and scalability that one doesn't get from a traditional agent/realtor.

That being said, I've seen newer, less "hip" flex spaces open to try and target that market.

I found a non-weWork type small office building, 250 private sqaure feet, one year minimum lease, cooler neighborhood and 75% the cost of any of the WeWork (et al) type places. We've got a 12 person conference room and three more counting the coffee places and restaurants that have private/reserved area that are all within two blocks. I just didn't want to be "downtown"

The standard in (US) commercial real-estate is triple net [1] at 10+ years. Everything else is basically a sublet in someone else's office...e.g. WeWork.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NNN_lease

My understanding is you can basically be "month to month" with WeWork, where I imagine other options require you to sign a lease.

leases are really messy. In the US you have leases with lockin, and in places like Japan where you can't force someone to stay in a lease, they instead force you to put up something like half a year's rent(!) as a security deposit.

True, but buying a property is much more cost effective than AirBnB isn't it?

You're using 2000s logic! Heroku is much more expensive than pretty much any other hosting model, yet people brag about their H/DO/AWS/etc. bills.