Travis McCready, head of life sciences, Americas markets at JLL, was a guest on the latest episode of Nareit’s REIT Report podcast.
McCready said 2023 was one of the most challenging years for life sciences real estate due to a slowdown in venture capital deployments, high interest rates and inflation, and “rather aggressive” real estate development of lab space over the past two years. ,
However, based on activity so far in 2024, “this year is already shaping up to be much more positive than last year, so fingers crossed that we see further upside in the coming months and year.” Looking to bounce back,” McCready said.
McCready said that after Covid there was a race to make space for the laboratory. This resulted in historically high availability of laboratory space compared to demand across the United States. “We have never seen an imbalance of this magnitude before. We’re just starting to come down from its peak, where we’re down about three times or four times, depending on the market, with a lot of room to spare. To be silly, we are a dragon swallowing a pig,” he said.
McCready emphasized that when looking at life sciences markets, “everything is hyperlocal… there is no monolithic performance that we can even look at as a market as a whole.”
During the interview, McCready commented on: developments in life science manufacturing methods; Impact of AI on life sciences; Other major breakthroughs that could provide opportunities and challenges for the life sciences real estate sector this year, and medtech in 2024 are worth keeping an eye on.
