Boston, San Francisco and San Diego continue to rank among the top three cities nationally for real estate investment in the life sciences sector, but growth in emerging markets like Raleigh-Durham, Los Angeles, and Washington DC are fueling serious competition.

Historically, investors in the sector targeted legacy markets where industry clusters are most long standing, and where a vast inventory of lab properties already exist. But as buyer competition heats up in those markets, development activity has begun to push to secondary cities, according to JLL.

"The life sciences industry has been investing in lab space and lab R&D for years, and new capital players continue to enter the space. Not only is venture capital fueling new company formation faster than ever before, new real estate capital players are battling for the best-located assets or development sites in hopes of tapping into this new wave of demand," said Travis McCready, Executive Managing Director and National Markets Practice Leader, JLL Life Sciences. "Historically, however, infrastructure and innovation investment in advanced biomanufacturing has lagged, and that will be the next hurdle as more companies grow to scale and enter into clinical trials at an accelerated rate."