Red flags before you sign
Contract terms and warning signs worth catching before you commit, not after.
Coworking contracts read shorter than a traditional office lease, which makes it easy to skim past the clauses that actually decide how expensive or painful an exit gets. A fifteen-minute read now saves a much longer argument in month six.
"Flexible, cancel anytime" often means cancel anytime with sixty or ninety days' notice. Check the exact number of days and whether notice has to be in writing, by email, or through a specific portal, missing the format can reset the clock.
Some contracts lock you into a minimum seat count regardless of how many people you actually bring in. If your team shrinks, you may still owe for desks nobody is sitting at until the contract term ends.
Look for the deduction list, damages, unpaid dues, early termination fees, and how many days after move-out the refund actually arrives. "Refundable" alone tells you nothing about timing.
Ask for the deposit refund timeline in writing over email, not just verbally during the tour.
Meeting room credits, printing quotas, and parking are the usual places prices quietly expand. Ask for the per-unit overage rate for each before you sign, not after your team blows through the monthly allowance.
Some contracts allow the operator to raise rates on renewal without a cap. If there is no ceiling mentioned, ask directly what increase to expect, a vague "market rate" answer is itself a signal worth noting.
Dedicated desk, 24/7 access, a specific number of meeting room hours, anything promised verbally during the tour that isn't in the contract is not enforceable. Ask for it to be added as an annexure if it matters to your decision.
None of this is about distrust, most operators are straightforward. It's about not finding out the hard way, mid-lease, which parts of the pitch were binding and which were just sales talk.