Hong Kong Takes Crown From Manhattan for Sky-High Store Rents

(Bloomberg) -- The retail rout that has swept through the U.S. has now cost the upper part of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue its status as the world’s most expensive street for store rents. Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay takes its crown.

Annual rents for the prime area of New York City have fallen by a quarter in the past year to $2,250 a square foot, on average, according to broker Cushman & Wakefield. This ends five years of double-digit increases that had made stores increasingly unaffordable for retailers battling the growth of e-commerce.

London’s New Bond Street, the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris and a street in the heart of Milan’s fashion district round out the top five.

Fifth Avenue rents “were arguably too high,” said Darren Yates, head of EMEA research and insight at Cushman & Wakefield in London. “They’d been growing at around 10 percent a year for the previous five years, so needed a correction.”

Note: Rent is annual average per square foot
Source: Cushman & Wakefield

To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Sidders in London at jsidders@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net, Paul Armstrong, Peter Jeffrey

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