After four years of unprecedented market turbulence, U.S. life sciences real estate sector supply is finally contracting with demand growing across top markets. JLL’s 2026 U.S. Lab Property Report reveals that lab availability has dropped by about 2 million square feet since mid-2025, which included the largest quarterly decline in a decade, signaling the market has bottomed out and begun its recovery. However, the path forward remains long, with substantial oversupply persisting and rental rates facing continued downward pressure through the end of the decade.
The report highlights a fundamental reshuffling underway: Tenants are aggressively trading up to newer, higher-quality buildings while older assets face mounting headwinds. Buildings completed since the beginning of 2020 have shed 2.6 million square feet of availability o
