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Investment sales activity for life sciences properties has fallen off a cliff over the last two years amid high interest rates and slowing demand, but a trio of properties in the sector's largest hub could help rejuvenate the market.
Three properties are being marketed for sale in Cambridge's Kendall Square — one by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and two by Alexandria Real Estate Equities — that are expected to trade at a combined $630M and will test investor appetite for the sector, Green Street's Real Estate Alert reported.
The leasehold interest for the MIT property at 730-750 Main St. is expected to sell for around $350M, according to Real Estate Alert. The 220K SF property is fully occupied by the university and two retail tenants. It was built in 1910 but redeveloped and expanded by MIT in 2022.
The larger Alexandria building at 215 First St. is expected to sell for around $160M, according to Real Estate Alert. The 370K SF property is 59% occupied by seven tenants, including the headquarters of Sarepta Therapeutics.
The other building the REIT is marketing spans 123K SF at 150 Second St., with 70% consisting of lab space and the remainder being offices. It is fully occupied by one tenant that is preparing to vacate: Foundation Medicine. The company is anchoring a new lab building in the Seaport that WS Development delivered in May.
The Second Street property is expected to sell for around $120M, according to Real Estate Alert. Newmark is marketing all three properties.
Alexandria has been one of the most active sellers in the Boston area, offloading a series of planned development sites at substantial discounts.
In March, it sold a South Boston industrial site that had been planned as a lab development for $13.3M, down from its 2018 sale price of $31.1M. In February, it sold an Andover office building for $3.9M, well below its 2022 price of $14.3M. In December, it sold two South Boston industrial properties for $87M, roughly half of their $169M price tag in 2020.
While those deals were for development sites, the market for selling operating life sciences properties has been slow since the once-booming biotech market fell back to earth in late 2022 and early 2023. The Cambridge-Boston market saw $965M of life sciences sales last year, down from $2.8B in 2022, according to Green Street.
The market has remained slow this year, according to CBRE's second-quarter Boston Metro Lab report. But it noted that a large amount of money has been raised to buy life sciences assets and a "select handful of offerings" have recently come to the market.
"The lack of data points leading to minimal price discovery has contributed to sellers targeting off-market processes," CBRE's report says. "Until we see the thawing of capital markets, we expect the relative tiptoe of private offerings to continue."
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