As Massachusetts biotech companies slash jobs and face dwindling investments, it appears that the long-red-hot real estate market for life sciences space in the area is continuing to follow a similar downward trend.
Lab space vacancies in the Boston area hit a 10-year high in the third quarter, reaching an 11.7% availability rate, according to a report by real estate firm Colliers. This represents more than 5 million square feet of unclaimed space, up from just 300,000 square feet of available space on the market in 2021. The demand from companies looking for space has dropped from about 8 million square feet in 2021 to about 2 million square feet today.
“More companies these days are finding themselves concerned with stretching out the money they have, increasing their runway for operations, than they are about going out and leasing extra space for growth,” said Jeffrey Myers, a research director at Colliers.