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Life science real estate is attracting growing attention from institutional investors across Europe as the sector demonstrates a resilience profile that stands in marked contrast to the battered office market — and the Netherlands is emerging as the most mature and investable market on the continent.
That was the central message from a webinar hosted by RUECKERCONSULT, in which three industry specialists made the case for a still-young asset class underpinned by structural demand, sticky tenants, and a supply deficit that shows no sign of closing. Following a slump in 2023, European transaction volume in the sector recovered to around €2.8 billion in 2024, with the key markets being the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Ireland and the Netherlands.
Science parks hold where offices stumble
The most striking data point came from Martin Kraaij of a.s.r. real estate, manager of the ASR Dutch Science Park Fund. Following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis in Q3 2022, prime Dutch offices suffered a valuation decline of close to 40%. Science parks, by contrast, declined by around 10% over the same period. Yields on Dutch science parks rose from 6.8% at the start of 2022 to 7.5% in Q3 2025, a relatively modest movement that Kraaij argued underlines the sector's crisis resilience.
"It's a strong sector and very resilient," said Kraaij. "The reason for that is that we have sticky tenants. They want to be housed in the ecosystems. Because they bring in their own fit-outs, they are very sticky."
That stickiness is reflected in lease terms that set the sector apart from conventional office product. The ASR fund currently holds a WAULT of seven years, set to rise to nine on a pending acquisition, despite the portfolio including startup tenants on leases as short as three to six months. At the other end of the spectrum, DSM Firmenich leases its global food division headquarters from the fund for 20 years, while TNO, the Dutch applied research organisation, has signed for 25 years.
Martin Eberhardt, CEO of HELIXalpha, a newly established life science real estate investment adviser, agreed that lease duration is a core structural advantage. "The tenants usually install the technology themselves — high-complex laboratory equipment — and that's why they definitely need ten-plus years for their financing and signing periods. That means we really have a very stable cash flow."
The ASR Dutch Science Park Fund currently manages €275 million across 12 assets on four locations, with a near-term pipeline of a further €17 million. Kraaij outlined ambitions to grow the fund to €1 billion, covering approximately 400,000 square metres across 13 selected science parks chosen from the 40 parks in the Netherlands using an in-house filter assessing knowledge anchors, ecosystem quality, real estate market dynamics and regional strength. The portfolio spans both established parks, including Amsterdam Science Park, Leiden Bio Science Park and the TU Delft campus, and a tier of emerging locations including Kennispark Twente, the Biotech Campus in Delft, and the Novotech Campus in Nijmegen.
A key proof of concept is NextDelft, a scale-up building on the TU Delft campus developed speculatively by a.s.r. real estate in collaboration with the university. Built with no pre-let tenants, the 10,000 sqm phase one was fully leased by the time of handover. A second phase of equal size was subsequently added and delivered at the end of last year. "That shows that the demand is there, but the product — the building itself — wasn't there," said Kraaij.
Structural undersupply and technical complexity
Eberhardt cited research from Professor Pfnür of the Technische Universität Darmstadt pointing to a "qualitative and quantitative, structural undersupply of areas in Europe," a finding he argued applies across the continent's leading clusters, from the Medicon Valley straddling southern Sweden and the Copenhagen region to the Rhine-Neckar cluster around Heidelberg. The macro backdrop is also supportive: Kraaij referenced both Mario Draghi's 2024 report calling for European strategic autonomy and a subsequent advisory paper to the Dutch government from Peter Wenning, former CEO of ASML, calling for investment in key technologies including life science, photonics, artificial intelligence and energy transition.
On pricing, a late-2024 acquisition by AEW of a modern life science building in Krailling, within the Großhadern hospital cluster outside Munich, was completed at a gross initial yield of 4.75%. Eberhardt attributed the sharpness of that yield to the asset's position within a well-established quadruple helix ecosystem combining science, industry, government and civil society. Across the broader European market, yields on life science assets are generally above 5%, with state-tenanted assets sometimes trading below that level, a profile Eberhardt compared to holding a government bond.
Dr. Manuel Schrapers, Managing Director of Metroplan GmbH, a Hamburg-based technical consultancy with 120 employees and a current project investment volume of €1.5 billion, emphasised the complexity that makes life science real estate difficult to replicate and costly to vacate. Life science buildings function as a hybrid of hospital, laboratory and office, with significantly elevated requirements around floor heights, load-bearing capacity, clean rooms, process gases, extraction systems and power redundancy. Laboratory ventilation alone must achieve an air change rate of 6 to 12 times per hour to ensure the safe removal of hazardous vapours and aerosols. Eberhardt further noted that life science real estate is subject to S1 and S2 biosafety classifications, denoting low and moderate risk respectively from biological or pathogenic substances, each carrying distinct planning and regulatory implications.
Schrapers also addressed AI integration, noting that while dedicated data centres remain a separate and rapidly growing asset class, life science campuses are increasingly incorporating computing areas and server rooms within their own buildings, with redundancy, fire protection and flood-proofing becoming standard planning considerations.
For institutional investors seeking resilient income in a volatile macro environment, the structural characteristics of life science real estate are proving an increasingly compelling case. As Eberhardt observed: "Where should you invest? One thing is clear: this asset class is resilient."