The Boston area office real estate market could be worse amid the turmoil of the pandemic.

On the laboratory market, on the other hand, things couldn’t be hotter.

It’s no exaggeration to say there’s no room for labs. at Cambridge. Research by real estate company Colliers revealed a vacancy rate of exactly 0.0% in the city for laboratory space for the third quarter of 2021.

The picture isn’t much different for Charles: Boston’s lab availability rate was 0.3%. Demand for lab space was steadily increasing even before the pandemic, with Boston-Cambridge boasting the highest prices per square foot nationwide.

The health crisis only increased demand, cementing Greater Boston’s position as the industry’s “place to be.” Take another proprietary report, this one from CBRE, which looked at life sciences trends for 2021: In the last three years alone, ending in Q3 2021, total laboratory space in Boston has doubled, adding about 20 million square feet.

The San Francisco Bay Area has slightly more life sciences jobs than the greater Boston area (129,000 vs. 104,000), but according to CBRE, Boston has the highest proportion of life sciences PhDs of any region. Even more revealing about the future is that life science companies in the Boston area raised $10.7 billion in venture capital in the first nine months of 2021, almost as much as the next two regions, San Francisco and San Diego together. In fact, exactly one-third of the capital of the nation’s life science companies went to companies in the greater Boston area.

At 42.2 million square feet, Boston has by far the largest life sciences and laboratory center in the country, and prices suggest demand will not slow down. At more than $90 per square foot, space in the greater Boston area is more expensive than anywhere else, yet eastern Massachusetts also has the lowest vacancy rate at just 1.1%, according to CBRE calculations.

Big players include lab rebuilds Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), and Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA). who signed key office and laboratory leases in 2021.

Looking ahead, more than 10 million square feet of new life sciences space will be built in the Boston area, another figure at which the region is grossly disproportionate to its peers. San Francisco is the closest but there is only one. a third of that number. RECOMMENDED It’s no wonder 3.2 million square feet of other space in the Boston area is being converted into labs.

Colliers expects Somerville and Watertown, natural extensions of the Cambridge submarket, to see much higher growth going forward. If you look at traditional office space, the numbers in the Boston area look very different, although not that far removed from other major markets during the pandemic.

The Boston market had an office vacancy rate of 15.8% in the second quarter of 2021, as recently reported by Colliers. This corresponds to 14.2% statewide and 12% in the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast, the latter being disproportionately boosted by the still-low numbers in Manhattan.

In fact, while Manhattan continues to do relatively well for office occupancy, so do some of Boston’s inner neighborhoods, at least compared with areas farther out. That could be an indicator that the draw of Boston’s denser areas continues during the pandemic.

Back Bay, which typically draws the highest lease rates, had just 8.6% of its space empty in the third quarter, according to Colliers. That was half or less of rates along Route 128 and beyond.

While Manhattan continues to do relatively well in terms of office occupancy, some of Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods also do well, at least compared to areas further out. That could be an indicator that the appeal of Boston’s more populated areas is sustained during the pandemic.

Back Bay, which typically commands the highest rents, had just 8.6% of its space vacant in the third quarter, according to Colliers. That was half or less of fares along Route 128 and beyond.